In this 1987 Easy Chair discussion, R.J. Rushdoony and Otto Scott argue that the “future” isn’t an unreadable mystery so much as the present worked out—and that modern decadence shows itself in a culture that can’t defend itself, won’t think past the moment, and replaces realistic planning with fantasy. They critique celebrity “futurecasting” as shallow, insular, and godless—whether rosy or grim—because it ignores that man is fundamentally religious, and history unfolds under God’s sovereign decree. Against the modern state’s push to “predestine” everything through total control (a horizontal Tower of Babel), they warn of coming judgment and testing, yet insist judgment can also be God’s clearing of the ground for renewal. Their hope rests in God’s unexpected interventions and in a rising, grassroots Christian seriousness—discipleship, responsibility, and rebuilding—so that believers don’t merely comment on the future, but work to create a godly one.

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In this episode (Feb. 12, 1987), R.J. Rushdoony dismantles the modern “brainwashing” narrative by drawing on suppressed Korean War research: the most resilient POWs were those with **governing convictions**—a living Christian faith and a clear belief in the free market—who were recognized as natural leaders, resisted manipulation, and even attempted escape, while the faithless majority proved tragically leaderless, anarchic, and easily induced to comply because they believed in nothing. From there he pivots to a sobering cultural warning: the same emptiness makes societies vulnerable to hypnotic suggestion through movies, propaganda, and statist schooling—illustrated even by criminals imitating *The Godfather*—and he argues that humanistic education produces citizens who vote for images instead of reality and tolerate absurdities (like Amtrak stopping trains mid-route for Daylight Saving Time). Rushdoony then surveys major fronts in the battle for the faith in public life: the push to rewrite God-language and subvert biblical revelation, the false “gospels” of technology and political revolution, modernist capture within church institutions and the Marxist distortion of “liberation,” the weaponization of child-abuse accusations to expand state power, and the pride of man exposed in tragedies like the Titanic—closing with a call to recover a faith that acts, serves, and builds dominion, and to tangibly aid persecuted Christians rather than merely sympathize.

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R.J. Rushdoony and Otto Scott examine the cultural and philosophical climate of the 20th century, focusing on existentialism and its pervasive influence. Existential philosophy, originating with Kierkegaard and popularized in the U.S. through Emerson, emphasizes living for the moment, personal experience, and the negation of objective truth or moral absolutes. Rushdoony notes that modern man increasingly mirrors the limited temporal perspective of “savages,” living in the present with little regard for the past or future, which manifests in short-term thinking in politics, media, and everyday life.

The discussion highlights the moral consequences of existentialism in culture and the arts. Figures like Sartre, de Beauvoir, Genet, Camus, and Polanski exemplify a system where personal experience and notoriety outweigh ethical conduct. Artistic acclaim and intellectual respectability often reward contempt for traditional values and embrace of evil or immorality as “new good.” Rushdoony and Scott link this to media, theater, and entertainment, showing a pervasive drive for continual sensation, visual shock, and superficiality that undermines historical awareness, thoughtful engagement, and enduring meaning.

Existentialism has also infiltrated the Church, seminaries, and education, producing a focus on personal experience over objective truth and a repudiation of serious moral or historical reflection. Rushdoony observes that this leads to infantilization, self-centeredness, and a collapse of communal and intergenerational wisdom. The resulting culture elevates triviality and egoism, prioritizes sensation over continuity, and fosters widespread moral and intellectual disorientation—what Scott describes as a society in which life itself has become a theatrical spectacle, leaving citizens trapped in perpetual “no exit” existentialism, oblivious to God and moral reality.