Ecclesiastes 7:10
Ecclesiastes 7:1010Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is unwise of you to ask about this.
— "Do not say, 'Why is it that the former days were better than these?' for it is not out of wisdom that you ask about this" — is not heavily cited by the Watchtower, which relies on the opposite rhetorical assumption for its 1914 apologetic: that world conditions since 1914 prove things are getting worse in a distinctive, eschatologically significant way.
is exactly the verse that names the cognitive bias the Watchtower's "world getting worse" argument exploits. We know our own suffering intimately and historical suffering only abstractly. Every generation feels its own age is uniquely bad, and every generation is wrong for the same reason. China suffered nearly one famine each year for two thousand years; the Chinese famine of 1876-79 was the largest recorded in human history, before 1914. India lost perhaps a third of its population in the 1769-70 famine. Europe saw 400 widespread famines in 600 years. Today, less than one percent of humanity faces acute starvation. Pair with — Jesus listed wars, famines, and earthquakes and said explicitly "the end is not yet." He warned the disciples not to do what the Watchtower now teaches them to do: read ordinary historical suffering as a sign of the end. Ecclesiastes warns against the wisdom bias; Jesus warns against the eschatological misreading that bias produces.