CO₂ is about as popular today as a rainy barbecue. Plants, however, view the whole thing with astonishing composure – they simply turn it into food. For many plants, more CO₂ means growing faster, becoming greener, and happily performing photosynthesis.
So one could say: While we humans argue about it, plants quite calmly go about their daily business with it. Perhaps CO₂ is not just the villain of the story – but also a rather diligent gardener.
And it is precisely at this point that something interesting happens. Not botanically, but socially. Because as soon as one utters such a sentence, it often doesn't take long before it is no longer the thought that is being discussed, but the person who expresses it. Then you are not someone who points out an aspect. Then you are suddenly the idiot. The conspiracy theorist. Politically suspect. The case for the routine eye-roll, before a real conversation might even begin.
That is precisely the point that interests me.
I don't necessarily want to be right at such points. I don't even want to claim that a single sentence contains the whole truth. I just want to be allowed to doubt. I want to be allowed to ask questions. I want to be allowed to express a thought that doesn't exactly fit into the pre-defined mold, without a differing opinion immediately being turned into a moral defect.
This reveals a great deal about the state of a society. Not by whether criticism is still allowed on paper somewhere. But by how it is dealt with. Whether it is considered a normal part of thinking. Or whether it is formally tolerated, but practically socially marked, morally suspected, and ultimately rendered inconsequential.
That seems to me to be one of the fundamental problems of Western democracies. Outwardly, the familiar forms are all still neatly in line: parliaments, courts, elections, authorities, procedures, press conferences, expert panels, participation formats. Everything is there. Everything has its jurisdiction, its rules of procedure, and its official communication channel. And yet, for many people, the impression is growing that criticism less and less often changes anything.
You can still speak. But you increasingly find that it achieves nothing.
And politically, that's a pretty big difference. A free order doesn't just thrive on dissent being allowed. It thrives on dissent being able to have consequences. That objections are not just recorded, but processed. That criticism doesn't just end up somewhere, but ideally actually corrects, slows down, or reorients something.
If people repeatedly experience that they speak, write, protest, complain, vote, object, and argue – and the system still continues largely unperturbed – then something lingers. First hope dwindles. Then commitment. Then trust. And eventually, there remains the feeling of living in a system that demands a lot from you, but is itself increasingly inaccessible.
Perhaps that is precisely the deeper crisis. Not in the open abolition of democratic forms. But in their creeping erosion.
Because the political system has long since become self-referential in a way that paralyzes its own development. It revolves around itself, explains itself from itself, and reacts to impulses from outside primarily when they are internally compatible. This sounds theoretical, but in everyday life, it is unpleasantly concrete.
A self-referential system eludes access precisely because responsibility circulates in rules, procedures, competencies, and routines. Nobody is truly responsible, because something was always predetermined, decided elsewhere, subject to deadlines, incorporated into European law, limited by budgetary constraints, administratively necessary, or already pre-shaped by supranational ties. The citizen then stands before an entity that has contact persons everywhere, but increasingly rarely an addressee. That is not just unpleasant. It is demoralizing.
And it is precisely at this point that the culture of thinking also shifts. Critical thinking is no longer what strengthens a free society, but something that is quickly perceived as a disturbance. Doubt is no longer a tool for seeking truth, but a suspicion. Anyone who asks questions is quickly considered someone who "serves a narrative," "sends signals," "creates connections to the right," or otherwise steps out of line. The argument recedes, the attribution comes to the fore. Entire areas are put behind firewalls so that one doesn't even have to seriously engage with them.
This shifts the debate. It's no longer about whether a thought is right or wrong, but whether it can even be said without immediately triggering an alarm. What matters then is no longer its content, but its social temperature: too hot, too cold, too delicate, too problematic. The sentence is not refuted, but treated hygienically.
This is not a good state for a free society. The impression arises that many truths are fundamentally already established and merely managed communicatively. Political disputes still take place, but often more as a ritual. The major directions often seem to have long since been pre-decided, while the public is allowed to discuss in what packaging they are served.
In the end, perhaps this is the real imbalance of our time: not that you can't say anything at all. But that you feel very precisely what you'd better not say if you don't want to be immediately categorized. And that you increasingly believe that words, objections, and arguments can no longer set anything in motion.
I don't want to accept that. I want to continue to doubt, to question, to look closely. Not out of a desire to be contrary, but because free thinking begins where prefabricated certainties end.
If you like, join me on this path of doubting. Every week I will address a topic here that is told too smoothly, sorted too quickly morally, or treated as a given truth. Topics that appear to be without alternative, although they may not be. Not to proclaim the one definitive truth, but to create space again for what an open society urgently needs: questions, dissent, and the courage to sometimes think against the grain.
