When you see the many and manifold institutions for teaching and learning and the great crowd of pupils and masters which throngs them you might think the human race was much occupied with wisdom and insight. But here too appearance is deceptive. The latter teach to earn money, and strive not for wisdom but for the appearance of it and to be credited with it; the former learn, not to achieve knowledge and insight, but so as to be able to chatter about them and give themselves airs. Every thirty years a new generation appears which knows nothing and then sets about trying to gulp down summarily and as fast as possible all the human knowledge assembled over the millennia, after which it would like to think it knows more than all the past put together. To this end it resorts to universities and reaches out for books, and for the most recent ones too, as being its own contemporaries and fellows of its own age. Everything quick and everything new! as new as it itself is. And then off it goes, loud with its own opinions!
— Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
Wait, is this the Eternal Recurrence? Am I reading Schopenhauer or Nietzsche? Dear God! This was written in 1851, and it could have been written yesterday. There’s no hope! It’s always been like this! On the other hand, this was written in 1851. There’s no need to despair; it’s always been like this. That’s the good news and the bad news. The lesson here is: neither hope nor despair, but maintenance — and earplugs.