I'm curious what everybody thinks on this. Is this a purely JW phenomenon or part of a larger social phenomenon or both?
That there is a malaise among young men has become fairly well documented of late.
They don't have the interest in education, careers, marriage, family, home ownership or any of the other traditional milestones we associate with adults that previous generations did.
Could the lack of ambition among JW males be part of this? Or have they simply wised up and recognize a prison treadmill when they see one?
When talking about this topic, I always have to remember something I heard a long time ago: "Every generation thinks the one before it is old-fashioned, and the one after is doomed." Not sure if this is some famous quote, but it's quite accurate. We tend to white-wash our own past and view the current youth through the lense of our current understanding of the world. This leads to a skewed perspective, which then leads us to confirmation bias - only picking up on evidence that today's youth are worthless humans and those older than us are hopelessly out of touch.
My personal theory is that the apathy in JW ranks is due to the combination of a number of factors:
1. Decline of productivity of the ministry - even if they're not consciously aware, it's been a long time for most JWs since the last time they had a productive bible study with anyone. This is discouraging. Even on the service meeting, the "good experiences" related almost invariably end with "we had a good conversation, even though they didn't take the magazines" or something else, whereas they used to end with "I started a bible study." Morale is down because of this, and this is probably a large part of the motivation for the numerous tract campaigns - they figure if they can get the JWs to the point where they're told not to start long conversations, they won't find it as demoralizing when they don't.
2. Somewhat related to #1, the world at large is becoming more secular. In any given day, a JW's faith is assaulted from many angles - science (evolution, cosmology, and archeology especially), increased connectivity to good people that aren't JWs, increased connectivity with JWs that may have left/faded, TVs shows and movies about scientologists and mormon/LDS cults, and a general disgust with evangelical christians. In response to all this, it's much easier to just not talk about being a JW with anyone. Any open/honest conversation would lead them to question their faith, and that's something that many are afraid to do. The only time they talk JW stuff is in groups that are exclusively JW, or in service. Outside of that, they don't want to do it. When they don't live it 100% of the time, it's harder to be zealous and to want to do it more, because they're probably happier when they don't have thier JW hat on.
3. This generation hasn't had their 1975 style fiasco. Failed predictions like that (and 1914-1925) do 2 things: weed out fence sitters and force those who remain to double-down and become more zealous. The net result is that you have a much higher percentage of people who are going to "reach out" for priveledges.
4. These days time is at a premium. There's always something that you can do to entertain yourself, and boredom isn't tolerated for more than a few minutes. In service, it's looked down upon to be playing angry birds on your phone while in the car, so it's super boring. The boredom of service is making a greater impact on the zeal of the younger generation than it did on mine (and I'm not that old at 30).
There's probably more to it still, and the culture of today's youth probably doesn't help much (and that's partially encompassed in point #4) but I don't think that's the sole problem.
