How much Education tolerates Wokism? E-Book

Hermann Selchow

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 266

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The critical nonfiction book on the current university crisis A well-founded analysis of freedom of expression at German and American universities The German and American higher education landscape is currently undergoing a period of profound change. While these developments are often framed under the banner of progress and social justice, closer examination also reveals problematic aspects that raise critical questions. This book systematically examines how the increasing politicization of university life affects students who express dissenting opinions or pose critical questions. Using documented cases from Germany and the USA, it demonstrates the mechanisms at work when young people question the prevailing consensus. Who is this book relevant for? This book is aimed at anyone concerned about the future of academic freedom. Parents will find important information here about the ideological currents their children can expect at university. Students gain insights into the complex social dynamics of campus life. Educational leaders and university faculty can use the developments presented as an opportunity to reflect on their own institutions. A necessary contribution to the educational debate The developments documented here are not limited to individual universities or countries. They reflect an international trend that affects the foundations of the Western educational tradition. The book is intended as a contribution to a long-overdue social discussion about the future of higher education. The presentation of the psychological and social mechanisms that lead to self-censorship and conformity is particularly valuable. Readers gain a deeper understanding of why many young people abandon their authentic beliefs and submit to a system that rewards conformity and punishes originality. A balanced perspective The book avoids one-sided blame and simple solutions. Instead, it acknowledges the complexity of the situation and demonstrates how various social forces have contributed to the developments described. This nuanced approach makes the work a valuable resource for anyone who seriously wants to engage with the challenges of today's educational landscape. The book is suitable for both professionals and interested laypeople. The essayistic style makes complex connections accessible without sacrificing analytical depth. Anyone seeking to understand current debates about freedom of expression, diversity, and academic standards will find a well-founded and insightful analysis here. An important contribution to the diagnosis of our times, one that stimulates reflection and invites a nuanced discussion about the future of our educational institutions.

Leseprobe

How much Education tolerates Wokism?

Essays about Education between Freedom and Dogma

© 2025 Hermann Selchow

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How much Education tolerates Wokism?

Essays about Education between Freedom and Dogma

Tables of Content

Ignorance is Bliss

How much education tolerates wokism?

What wokism does to teachers

What wokism does to students

How the woke infiltration of educational institutions came about

What societies lose through wokism

Political correctness in our children's classrooms

Who determines what is “true” and why?

Art, culture and history: What can still be taught?

On a personal note: What about free speech and writing

International Perspectives: Wokism in the USA, Europe and Asia

Ways out of polarization: For a balance

Also published by me:

Ignorance is Bliss

Once upon a time, there was a land called Wokistan, where the sun always shone and no one ever thought to ask why. The inhabitants of this fairytale kingdom were fortunate enough to have been spared any kind of laborious education, which gave them an enviable carefree attitude. King Ignorant the First ruled his subjects with an iron fist—the iron, of course, being metaphorical, for no one knew what metaphors actually were anymore.

The people of Wokistan lived in a state of permanent bliss. They didn't understand the news, so they couldn't be alarmed by bad news. Economic crises and inflation were merely strange words to them, occasionally appearing on television, amidst advertisements for happy pills, dental floss, and lottery tickets. They followed political debates with the same relaxed attention as cartoons, usually choosing the politician with the funniest hairstyle.

In Wokistan's schools, children mainly learned how to push buttons. Reading was considered superfluous, after all, there were voice assistants, and arithmetic had long since been replaced by calculator apps. History had been abolished because it only made people sad, and philosophy hadn't even been introduced because no one knew what the word even meant.

The inhabitants of Wokistan were truly happy. They didn't worry about the future because they couldn't foresee it anyway. They didn't argue about complicated topics because they didn't understand them. They didn't suffer from existential angst because they didn't know what existence meant. Every morning they woke up with a smile, ate their microwaved cornflakes, looked at colorful pictures on their screens, and went to sleep without ever asking why they actually existed.

The economy flourished miraculously because they had everything delivered to them from the internet. There, they had everything that advertising offered, and what advertising didn't offer, they didn't need. People bought what they were shown in wonderfully colorful pictures and videos, unable to distinguish between need and artificially created desire. They happily went into debt for things they didn't need, with money they didn't have, to impress people they didn't know. Loan sharks were the secret rulers of this paradise, but no one noticed, because no one understood how interest worked or what credit and debt were.

Politics was also a rosy mess. Politicians could do whatever they wanted, because no one understood their decisions well enough to question them. Corruption bloomed like flowers in spring, nepotism was as natural as breathing, and freedom of the press had long since become a nostalgic term that no one could spell anymore.

But then, one day, something terrible happened in this paradise of ignorance. A little boy named Curious—a name his parents had given him because they had forgotten its meaning—found an old, dusty book in the ruins of what had once been a library. And, as in all good fairy tales, this was the moment when disaster struck.

The book was heavy and smelled of bygone times. It was called "The Art of Thinking Your Own Way" and was written in a strange language that used to be called German—a language with complicated words and even more complicated thoughts. Little Curious, who had previously only known emojis and text messages, began to laboriously decipher what was written there.

And the more he read, the unhappier he became. He learned about concepts like justice and injustice, about the possibility that authority could be questioned, about the idea that the world might be more complicated than it first appeared. Worse still, he began to understand that life in Wokistan might not be as paradisiacal as it seemed.

The boy ran to his parents and excitedly told them about his discoveries. But they just looked at him blankly, smiled their usual empty smiles, and said, "Don't worry, sweetheart. Watch those funny videos on the screen instead." But Curious began to feel uncomfortable in the paradise that wasn't one. And so the fairy tale ended as all good fairy tales do: with the realization that the bliss of ignorance only lasts until someone starts thinking.

But let's leave fairytale Wokistan and turn to the real world, a world that has become frighteningly similar to the fictional kingdom. For what appears as a caricature in our satirical fairy tale turns out, upon closer inspection, to be only a slightly distorted representation of current realities.

The thesis that ignorance can lead to a form of superficial happiness is by no means new. The Roman poet Ovid coined the phrase "Ignorantia est beatitudo" – ignorance is bliss. But what happens when this ancient wisdom becomes a societal maxim? What happens when an entire civilization decides to exchange the arduous business of thinking for the comfortable illusion of ignorance?

The answer to these questions reveals itself not in spectacular collapses or dramatic catastrophes, but in a creeping process of intellectual impoverishment so subtle that it is barely noticed by those affected. It is a process that, paradoxically, comes with the promise of greater comfort and less effort – a process that deceives people into believing they are gaining, while in reality they are losing everything that makes them thinking beings.

Let's begin with a seemingly innocuous observation: the increasing digitalization of our everyday lives. What was initially celebrated as technological progress, as a liberation from tedious routines and time-consuming activities, turns out to be a double-edged sword upon closer analysis. The search engine is replacing memory, the algorithm is replacing our own judgment, and artificial intelligence is replacing human thought. Where once effort was required to acquire and retain knowledge, today a single click is all it takes. Where once critical thinking was necessary to evaluate and classify information, algorithms now preselect what we see.

This development is not inherently problematic – tools are initially neutral, and their effect depends on how they are used. It only becomes problematic when the tools are no longer seen as a supplement to human abilities, but as their replacement. When the smartphone becomes an outsourced memory, the ability to remember atrophies.

If the search engine provides all the answers, the ability to ask the right questions atrophies. If the algorithm makes all the important decisions, we forget how to make decisions.

But technology is merely the catalyst for a deeper problem. The real dilemma lies in the fundamental attitude of a society that views effort as superfluous and complexity as an imposition. It is a society that prefers simplicity to correctness, speed to thoroughness, sensation to substance.

This attitude manifests itself particularly clearly in the way education is understood and taught. Education is increasingly reduced to its immediate utility, to its ability to prepare graduates for the job market. Anything that isn't immediately monetizable comes under pressure to justify itself. Humanities are viewed as a luxury that an efficient society cannot afford. Critical thinking is perceived as disruptive because it disrupts the smooth running of established processes.

The result is a form of education that barely deserves the name. Instead of teaching people how to think, they are taught what to think. Instead of inspiring curiosity, conformity is rewarded. Instead of encouraging questions, answers are prescribed. The school becomes a factory that produces standardized products for a standardized market.

This development has far-reaching consequences that extend far beyond the education system. A society that stops thinking also stops questioning. And a society that no longer questions becomes easy prey for all kinds of manipulation and exploitation.

The political implications of this intellectual impoverishment are obvious. Democracy requires responsible citizens, people capable of understanding complex issues, weighing different viewpoints, and making informed decisions. When these abilities diminish, democracy becomes a hollow shell, a ritualized process without substantive content.

Rational discussion is then replaced by what is known as post-factual politics: a form of political discourse in which the truth or falsity of claims is no longer important, but rather solely about their emotional impact. Complex problems are reduced to catchy slogans, and sophisticated analyses are replaced by simple blame. The politician who offers the more complicated but more accurate explanations is defeated by the one who gives the simpler but wrong answers.

This dynamic is not limited to politics. It permeates all areas of social life. In the media, it leads to the trivialization of complex issues, the scandalization of everyday life, and the neglect of what is truly important. Entertainment value becomes the sole criterion, attention spans shrink, and the willingness to engage in deeper debate dwindles.

In business, it leads to a short-term orientation that sacrifices long-term sustainability for quick returns. Complex economic relationships are ignored or deliberately obscured in order to sell simple solutions. The financial crises of recent decades are also an expression of this refusal to take the complexity of modern economic systems seriously.

In science, it leads to a popularization that turns the legitimate need for comprehensibility into a trivialization that does not do justice to the matter. Complex research results are reduced to catchy headlines, and uncertainties and nuances fall victim to the need for clear statements. Science becomes a purveyor of certainties, even though its very essence lies in dealing with uncertainty.

But perhaps the most devastating effects are evident in the area of interpersonal relationships. People who are no longer accustomed to thinking also lose the ability to empathize, which is always a thought process—the attempt to put themselves in another person's shoes, to understand their motivations, to comprehend their perspective. Where this ability diminishes, emotional coldness sets in, an inability for genuine human connection.

Social media reinforces this tendency by reducing complex human personalities to simple profiles and complex opinions to binary reactions—"like" or "dislike," "friend" or "block." The nuances of human communication, the subtleties of interpersonal relationships, are lost in this digital reductionism.

What remains is a form of pseudo-community in which people are permanently connected but increasingly communicate less and less with each other. They share information but not ideas; they exchange opinions but not arguments; they are together but not united.

This trend is further exacerbated by the fact that the modern world of work increasingly produces specialized professionals who, while highly competent in their narrowly defined fields, lack direction outside of them. The artificial intelligence expert understands nothing of history, the financial analyst nothing of philosophy, the physician nothing of literature. Everyone is a specialist in something and a layman in everything else.

On the one hand, this hyperspecialization makes a society more efficient—everyone does what they do best. On the other hand, however, it also makes it more vulnerable to manipulation and poor decision-making because the ability for comprehensive analysis and the synthesis of different perspectives is lost. Complex problems require interdisciplinary solutions, but a society of specialists is structurally incapable of developing such solutions.

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that the speed of technological and societal change makes it increasingly difficult to keep pace with developments. What is considered truth today may already be outdated tomorrow. What was unthinkable yesterday is reality today. In such a world, the ability for lifelong learning and permanent intellectual flexibility becomes a survival strategy.

But this very ability is undermined by an education that focuses on providing ready-made answers rather than developing the ability to ask questions. People who are accustomed to being told what is right and wrong are helpless when they suddenly have to make their own decisions. They then seek out new authorities to make the decision for them – and in doing so, they often fall victim to demagogues and charlatans.

The irony of this development is that it culminates at a moment when humanity possesses more knowledge than ever before in its history. Never before has information been so easily accessible, never before has education been so widespread, never before have the technical possibilities for imparting knowledge been so diverse. And yet – or perhaps precisely because of this – we are experiencing an era of ignorance that is unprecedented in its systematic nature.

The reason for this paradox lies in the confusion between information and knowledge, between data and understanding. A search engine can provide us with millions of pieces of information on any topic in a fraction of a second. But it cannot help us understand, classify, or evaluate this information. It can show us what others have thought, but it cannot think for us.

Knowledge is more than the sum of available information. Knowledge arises from linking information, from placing it in larger contexts, and from its critical evaluation. Knowledge is an active process that requires effort—the effort of thinking.

But this very effort is considered unnecessary and old-fashioned in a society that values convenience above all else. Why bother trying to understand when others have already understood and their insights are available at the click of a mouse? Why think for yourself when machines are becoming increasingly better at thinking for us?

The answer to these questions lies in the realization that thinking is not just a means to an end, but a value in itself. Thinking is what makes us human. It is the ability that distinguishes us from other living beings and allows us not only to exist, but to live in the fullest sense of the word.

People who no longer think may, on the surface, be happier—they are plagued by fewer doubts, burdened by fewer worries, confused by fewer complexities. But it is the happiness of cattle in the pasture, not the happiness of humans. It is a happiness that comes at a price—the renunciation of everything that makes human life rich and meaningful.

For human happiness, true happiness, cannot be separated from the ability to understand the world in which we live. It cannot be separated from the possibility of making conscious decisions, developing one's own values, creating meaning. But all of this presupposes the willingness and ability to think.

A society that abandons thinking thereby also abandons the possibility of true human happiness. It may be more content in the short term, but it becomes poorer in the long term—poorer in experiences, poorer in opportunities, poorer in everything that makes life worth living.

The consequences of this development are already visible today. We are experiencing an increase in depression and anxiety disorders, especially in the wealthiest and most technologically advanced societies. Paradoxically, the more amenities people have at their disposal, the less effort they have to make, the unhappier they seem to become.

The reason for this is simple: Humans are not designed for a life without challenges. They need to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and achieve goals. They need to feel that their lives have meaning, that their efforts are meaningful, that they are contributing to something greater. But all of this is impossible without the ability and willingness to think.

Thinking is exhausting—that's true. It is tedious, frustrating, and sometimes tormenting. It leads to doubt, to insecurities, to uncomfortable truths. But it is also the only thing that protects us from ultimate meaninglessness, from the reduction of our existence to basic biological functions.

The challenge of our time lies in finding a path between the Scylla of excessive demands and the Charybdis of insufficient demands. We must create education systems that empower people to deal with complexity without overwhelming them. We must develop technologies that complement human capabilities without replacing them. We must create a culture that values effort without idolizing it.

This is no easy task. It requires a fundamental reassessment of what education means, what progress means, what human life means. It requires the courage to abandon cherished comforts in favor of a more strenuous but more fulfilling existence.

Above all, it requires the recognition that the choice between happiness and intelligence is a false dichotomy. True happiness and genuine intelligence are not opposites, but complements. Intelligence without happiness leads to sterile coldness; happiness without intelligence leads to hollow superficiality. Only the combination of the two enables a life that is both fulfilling and meaningful.

Making this connection is the great task of our time. It is a task that concerns each and every individual, but one that can only be solved together. It requires a societal effort that transcends political boundaries and ideological differences.

The first step toward this solution lies in acknowledging the problem. As long as we view the creeping dumbing down of our society as the inevitable price of progress, or even welcome it as a desirable development, we will not find answers. Only when we understand what we are about to lose can we begin to preserve it.

This does not mean that we must abandon the technological achievements of modernity. On the contrary – we must learn to make better use of them. Technology should enhance human capabilities, not replace them. It should help us solve more complex problems, not find simpler solutions.

Nor does this mean that we must return to an elitist form of education reserved for only a privileged few. On the contrary – we must democratize education while maintaining its quality. Every person has the right to an education that enables them to lead a self-determined and reflective life.

The challenge lies in reconciling these high standards with the realities of a complex, fast-moving world. This requires innovative approaches, creative solutions, and, above all, a willingness to question entrenched ways of thinking.

An important aspect of this is the rehabilitation of doubt. In a world that demands quick answers to complex questions, doubt has become a stigma, a sign of weakness or incompetence. Doubt is the foundation of all progress, the engine of knowledge, the source of wisdom.

People must relearn that it's okay to ask questions, even if you don't have answers. They must learn that uncertainty is not the opposite of competence, but often its companion. They must learn that the most important truths are often the most uncomfortable.

This requires a fundamental shift in the way we think about success and failure. Success can no longer be measured solely by measurable results, but must also consider the quality of the thought process. A well-thought-out mistake is more valuable than an unreflective success.

At the same time, we must learn to deal with ambiguity—with situations where there are no clear answers, where different truths can coexist, where contradictions don't need to be immediately resolved. This is perhaps the most difficult lesson of all, because it contradicts our natural need for clarity and unambiguity.

But without this ability, we will not be able to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The major problems of our time—from social inequality to technological disruption to ecological crises—are complex and multifaceted. They require nuanced answers, sophisticated analyses, and interdisciplinary approaches.

All of this is exhausting, uncomfortable, and sometimes frustrating. It would be much easier to ignore these problems or brush them aside with simplistic solutions. But simplicity is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has become complicated, and we must learn to deal with this complexity.

That doesn't mean we have to give up the joy of life. On the contrary—people who understand the world can also enjoy it more. They can form deeper relationships, have richer experiences, and make more fulfilling decisions. They are not prisoners of their circumstances but creators of their destinies.

The path to this goal is not easy, but it is possible. It begins with the realization that education is more than training, that knowledge is more than information, that life is more than existence. It continues with the willingness to undertake the effort of thinking, even if it is sometimes painful.

And it ends with the experience that the happiness that comes from understanding is deeper and more lasting than the happiness that springs from ignorance. It is a happiness that does not depend on the world remaining simple, but rather arises precisely from confronting its complexity.

In our fairytale Dummhausen, we had a little boy named Curious who found a book and began to think. His fairytale ended with the realization that thinking means the end of naive bliss. But perhaps that is not the end of the story, but its beginning. Perhaps the moment we cease to be naively happy is the moment we begin to become truly human.

The choice is ours. We can continue to live in the fairytale land of ignorance, protected from the harshness of reality, but also deprived of its possibilities. Or we can choose the arduous path of awakening, with all its difficulties, but also with all its opportunities.

The story isn't finished yet. We are all authors of this unfinished work. The only question is: Which ending do we want to write? The ending of fairy tales where everyone is happy and content, but also meaningless? Or the ending of great stories where people transcend themselves and create something lasting?

The answer to this question will determine whether humanity has a future or only a present—whether it remains a creator or becomes a creature, whether it thinks or merely reacts, whether it lives or merely exists.

In this choice between being and appearance, between depth and superficiality, between the effort of thought and the comfort of thoughtlessness lies perhaps the most important decision our species has ever faced. And it is a decision that each and every one of us must make—not once and for all, but every single day anew.

Because in the end, the question "Happy, but stupid?" is not a rhetorical one, but an existential one. The answer to it will determine nothing less than the future of human civilization.

Perhaps it is time for all of us to become a little like the little Curious One—to learn to ask questions again, even when the answers are uncomfortable. To learn to doubt again, even when certainty would be more comfortable. To learn to think again, even when thoughtlessness is easier.

Because only in this way can we prevent our satirical fairy tale of Wokistan from becoming a prophecy. Only in this way can we ensure that humanity, in the future, remains more than just a collection of contented, but mindless beings. Only in this way can we fulfill the promise inherent in every human spirit—the promise not only to inhabit the world, but to understand, shape, and transform it.

The choice lies before us. We can make it. We must make it. Because the alternative—a world full of happy fools—is not an alternative worthy of a thinking species.

How much education tolerates wokism?

A specter haunts the sterile corridors of our universities—not that of communism, as Marx once conjured, but that of a new orthodoxy that celebrates itself as progressive while destroying the foundations of what education once meant. It is a strange irony of history that the very institutions dedicated to enlightenment and free thought have now mutated into temples of a new doctrine, where heresy is no longer punished by burning at the stake, but by social ostracism and academic excommunication.

The university, once a place of debate and intellectual friction, has transformed into a wellness oasis for sensitive souls, where every uncomfortable truth is branded a "microaggression" and every contradiction is categorized as "toxic." Where Socrates once cornered his interlocutors with persistent questioning until they recognized the fragility of their convictions, today the motto prevails: "Do not question anything that might hurt one's feelings." Socratic dialogue has given way to therapeutic group discussions, the dialectic of empathic poetry.

One might think this is a bad joke in world history: The very generation that considers itself the most enlightened of all time is establishing new prohibitions on thought with an efficiency that would make any medieval inquisitor green with envy. Except that today's auto-da-fés aren't taking place in marketplaces, but in the echo chambers of social media, where reputations burn faster than books in the fires of book burners.

Let's begin with a scene from everyday academic life: Professor Müller—let's call him that, although he could just as easily be called Schmidt or Weber—enters his lecture hall for a lecture on 19th-century European history. In the past, he might have begun with a provocative thesis, a bold statement that would have provoked his students into contradiction. Today, he cautiously probes his way like a minesweeper in the intellectual realm of political correctness. "Dear students," he begins, already instinctively avoiding the generic masculine, "today we're talking about industrialization and its social consequences." A harmless introduction, one might think. But Professor Müller knows: Every word can become a trap.

Because in the world of woke educational institutions, history is no longer the study of past events, but has become an instrument for enforcing current ideological goals. The past isn't understood, but condemned—according to the moral standards of an era that considers itself the pinnacle of human development. It's like accusing Shakespeare of not using smartphones or criticizing Aristotle for not philosophizing about Instagram.

This new form of historical observation follows a simple pattern: The past is transformed into a morality play in which there are only oppressors and oppressed, perpetrators and victims, evil and good. The complexity of human motivations, the contradictions of historical developments, the paradoxes of social transformation – all of this disappears behind a binary worldview as crudely constructed as a medieval woodcut.

Let's take the example of the Enlightenment, the era that actually forms the intellectual foundation of our universities. Voltaire, Diderot, Kant – all "old white men," as they are disparagingly called today, as if this were a sufficient critique of their ideas. The fact that these "old white men" laid the intellectual foundations for the equality of all people, that they criticized slavery and fought for human rights – is often overlooked. Instead, the focus is on their contradictions and blindness, as if historical figures were only acceptable if they already embodied the complete morality of the 21st century.

This retroactive moral blackmail of history has fatal consequences for the understanding of historical developments. History is no longer understood as a complex process in which people acted under specific conditions, but as a simple struggle between good and evil. But this is the end of any serious historical scholarship and the beginning of historical propaganda.

Professor Müller knows all this, but he also knows that openly opposing this new orthodoxy can be damaging to his career.

So he carefully navigates the shoals of political correctness, inserting an apology here ("Of course, we must critically examine the colonialist perspective of these sources"), a qualification there ("It is important to emphasize that marginalized voices were underrepresented during this period"). His lecture becomes a walk on eggshells, in which the actual transmission of knowledge becomes secondary.

The students, of course, notice this. They sense their professor's anxiety, his caution, his constant readiness for self-criticism. And they learn an important lesson from this—albeit not the one a university should teach. They don't learn to think critically or understand complex concepts. They learn that it is dangerous to ask uncomfortable questions and that intellectual conformity is the surest path to success.

This is perhaps the bitterest irony of the woke educational revolution: It produces the very opposite of what it claims to combat. Instead of critical thinkers, it cultivates cowards; instead of courageous, unconventional thinkers, fearful followers; instead of intellectual rebels, obedient ideologues. The university, once the place where young people learned to question authority, has itself become the ultimate authority—only it exercises its power not through arguments, but through emotional blackmail.

Let's consider another example from everyday university life: literary studies, once the pinnacle of the humanities. Here, students should learn to understand the great works of world literature, to decipher their language, and to explore their layers of meaning. But what happens today in seminars on Shakespeare or Goethe? The works are no longer read to understand them, but to expose them. Every text becomes a criminal case, in which traces of sexism, racism, and classism are searched for. The text is no longer viewed as an autonomous work of art, but as a symptom of social power relations.

This way of examining literature may have its justification—as one approach among many. It becomes problematic when it is declared the only access, when the beauty and complexity of a work of art disappears behind its ideological instrumentalization. When students learn that "The Merchant of Venice" is nothing more than an anti-Semitic pamphlet, "The Tempest" a colonialist fantasy, and "Hamlet" the story of a toxic patriarch, then they have learned something essential about literature: that it is only valuable if it conforms to the moral standards of the present.

The consequences are predictable: Students lose interest in the literature of past eras because they have learned that everything written before their time is morally contaminated. They no longer read classics because they seem to them to be relics of a reprehensible past. The great works of world literature, which have moved and shaped generations of readers for centuries, become museum objects that can only be viewed under quarantine conditions.

One of the fundamental insights of education is that we can only understand who we are if we know where we come from. The past—with all its contradictions and imperfections—is the material from which our present is formed. Those who deny or demonize it deprive themselves of the possibility of self-knowledge. They become people without history, without roots, without direction.

Woke ideology promises the opposite: absolute moral clarity in a complex world. It offers simple answers to complicated questions and clear attributions of blame for ambiguous situations. This is what makes it so seductive, especially for young people who have to find their way in a confusing world. The woke worldview functions like a map: It shows where the good and bad areas lie, which paths are safe and which are dangerous.

The only problem is: This map doesn't reflect reality. It is an ideological construct that reduces the complexity of the world to handy formulas. Those who orient themselves according to it will not reach their goal but will become hopelessly lost. Because reality is more complicated than any ideology, more ambiguous than any morality, more contradictory than any worldview.

This is particularly evident in the natural sciences, where woke ideology encounters the toughest resistance: reality itself. Here, you can't simply claim that two plus two equals five because it feels "empowering." This is where experiments work or they don't, where theories are right or wrong, where objective truths exist that exist independently of the feelings and beliefs of researchers.

But even the natural sciences are not spared from the woke invasion. Here, however, it manifests itself more subtly: in the demand for "diversity" in STEM subjects, which often practically means that women and ethnic minorities are given preference even if they have the same qualifications. This may be socially desirable, but it changes the nature of science: instead of following the best argument or the most convincing theory, demographic quotas are now followed.