I suggested that the apparent decline in people's capacity to consider alternatives to their own beliefs could (paradoxically) be attributable to the rising influence of academia. Far more people nowadays receive 'training', in the kinds of intellectual approach favoured by humanities professors, compared to 40 years ago. While some of these approved approaches may be analogous to those used in the physical or medical sciences, many of them are not.
'Critical Theory', for example, a set of techniques that has become dominant in academic arts subjects, has little in common with science. It's essentially an arm of Marxist ideology.
Though there's a pretence that 'critical' analysis is being employed, in practice the answers are largely predetermined, and tend to come with a strong dose of moral pressure. 'If you don't agree with our stance, you may be complicit in the process of causing harm.' The underlying effect seems to be to stir people up, or at least make them uncomfortable, though they may not always be conscious of it.
Being repeatedly told (even if only in the form of subtext) that contemporary society is harmful, and that you're complicit unless you're actively opposing the status quo, is bound to leave its mark. For some impressionable individuals, it's likely to change their outlook and attitudes fundamentally and permanently. But even for less impressionable students, it may exert profound background influence, however much they may say and think that they didn't take campus ideology seriously at the time.
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On 10 September 2025, conservative pundit Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a university campus in Orem, Utah, apparently by a young college graduate who objected to Kirk's views, or to what he assumed those views to be.
More disturbing than the event itself have been the reactions to it. Comments on discussion websites such as Quora.com, presumably representing a cross-section of viewpoints, were at best only lukewarm-sympathetic. On average, they weren't sympathetic at all. Many comments amounted to the view that 'Kirk had it coming'. One gets the feeling that there's quite a few people who wouldn't have minded killing Charlie Kirk themselves, if it had been easy, and if they could have been sure of getting away with it.
How does what we are seeing fit with the narratives constructed by leftist intellectuals? According to the latter, it's the Right whose views are fuelled by hatred and intolerance. The image that's been created is one of crazed, unreasonable reactionaries; fervent believers who are emotive, verging on hysterical, in their attachment to irrational attitudes. Yet the evidence suggests that the precise opposite may be true. It's the Left that has become immune to reason, believing in the values of its preferred religion (wokeism) with evangelical zeal. It's the Left which seems to have adopted near-hysterical intolerance as its MO.