When Ideology Feels Like Common Sense
I saw an image on the University of Bern’s social media feed and felt that familiar flicker of recognition. Three young women laughing in a tram. Bright winter light. Casual clothes. Public transport. Urban ease. One male face almost entirely cut off at the edge of the frame.
Nothing offensive. Nothing dramatic. I am a man. I drive a car, a Toyota Corolla to be precise. I do not feel attacked by this picture. And yet the image felt unmistakably typical.
Not accidental.
Universities do not post images by chance. They curate atmosphere. They stage values. They present a world as it should be seen.
The caption was about humor. How humor can unite or divide. A harmless, almost banal observation. But the image carried its own quiet instruction: even humor belongs within the correct moral scenery.
The laughter takes place in a tram, not in a car. In public space, not in a private garage. Among young, smiling women, not among men joking loudly over beer. The world is tidy, sustainable, socially agreeable. The joy is framed inside a pre-approved cultural setting.
And that is where the discomfort begins.
Not because climate, public transport, or young women are problematic. They are not. The discomfort comes from the predictability.
You know in advance what the university’s social media feed will look like. You know which causes will be affirmed. You know which images will symbolize virtue. You know which atmospheres are safe.
And you also know which ones would never appear.
Would the university post a picture of two old men in a car, windows down, laughing on a country road? Probably not. That image would raise questions. Cars mean emissions. Male bonding can be misread. Rural scenes fall outside the progressive aesthetic. And age itself unsettles the narrative. Older men do not symbolize the future. They do not signal diversity, mobility, or renewal. Their laughter would not read as fresh or forward-looking. It would feel ordinary. Uncurated. Unaligned.
Age matters because the current institutional aesthetic is future-oriented. Youth stands for openness, transformation, moral evolution. Older men suggest continuity, habit, perhaps even resistance, even if they are doing nothing more than laughing.
In isolation, none of this matters. But taken together, it forms a pattern.
Ideology is obvious when it belongs to the other side. When it belongs to us, it feels like common sense.
The same people who would immediately deconstruct a conservative campaign ad might see nothing ideological in this image of three women in a tram. To them, it is neutral. Natural. Simply how the world is.
That is the blind spot.
The issue is not that universities lean in a particular direction. They always have. The issue is that the direction becomes invisible to those inside it. What feels like shared reality to them feels like curated moral scenery to others.
Public institutions funded by a broad society should at least be aware of this tension. Not because they must mirror every viewpoint, but because intellectual integrity begins with recognizing one’s own frame.
The danger is not disagreement. The danger is uniformity so polished that it no longer registers as a choice.
When even laughter is staged inside the correct atmosphere, something subtle narrows. The range of what feels culturally legitimate shrinks, quietly, aesthetically, without argument.
No one is forced. No one is censored. But the scenery speaks.
And it tells you what kind of world is approved.