It promised to make thought easier. Instead, it made thinking optional. It flattened hierarchies, but also flattened standards. It replaced the difficult question of “Is it true?” with the easier one: “Does it feel right?” It did not begin as an ideology but as a habit, and only later became a worldview.

I’m usually less concerned with individual political movements than with deeper civilizational currents. I prefer careful distinctions, conceptual precision, historical context, intellectual honesty, and the discipline of following arguments wherever they lead. I can also react strongly when language becomes imprecise or when rhetoric substitutes for substance. My interest in law, philosophy, history, and judicial reasoning reinforces the same pattern: institutions work only when truth is pursued independently of convenience, popularity, or emotion.

From that perspective, the most damaging historical trend would not be a specific invention, ideology, or technology. It would be the gradual cultural abandonment of objective standards of reasoning. Once a society ceases to believe that arguments can be better or worse, that facts constrain opinion, or that language should describe reality rather than merely influence it, every institution begins to erode. Law becomes politics in robes. Journalism becomes persuasion. Education becomes affirmation. Public debate becomes a competition for attention instead of a search for truth.

What makes this trend particularly dangerous is that it is self-reinforcing. As confidence in objective standards declines, the incentives increasingly reward emotional appeal, tribal identity, and rhetorical effectiveness over accuracy. The result is not merely more disagreement, but the disappearance of any common method for resolving disagreement.

Therefore, the trend that I would like to erase from history would be the rise of relativism, especially the cultural trend that treats truth as subjective, language as merely instrumental, and reason as secondary to emotion or identity.

© Dominik Alexander / 2026