Your virtue has ruined you

Someone should shout it from the rooftops, if only it wouldn’t get you labeled as crazy or right-wing, which is considered the same these days. Someone should write it on your children’s eyelids, before they need to know it – before they find it out themselves – because by then it is usually too late.

I want to first shut the mouth of the German debate and then press the pillow over its face until there is silence. Then wait a bit longer until the debate, as well as the mood of the onlookers and other victims, has cooled down.

And then, into the startled-relaxed silence, I want to stamp an old piece of advice into your conscience: What got you here, won’t get you out of here. (It sounds even snappier in English: What got you here, won’t get you out of here.)

Every day we read about new horrors. For example, quite recently: „Murder in Magdeburg: Syrian kills woman on promenade“ (bild.de, 09.08.2025).

What will Germany do? Nothing. At least nothing different from what led to this.

But that is not your biggest problem.

Your biggest problem is that you will probably continue to do exactly what you have been doing while things developed this way.

We know that funny, modern wisdom: „If you’re in a hole, at least stop digging!“

It is (no longer) important for the next steps who dug this hole, why it was dug, and how you got in. One thing is certain: You will not get out the same way you came in.

Life is not unfair, and you have been lied to more often and more thoroughly than your school wisdom allows you to dream. Once you have admitted that to yourself, then also admit this: It was not your weakness, but your virtue that has ruined you.

You persisted where giving up and starting anew would have been wiser. You gritted your teeth where it would have been wiser to let them apart. You took pride in your work and diligence, yet your busyness was actually laziness and cowardice. You threw yourself into work because you were too lazy and too cowardly to pause, look, and honestly name what is happening around us – and where it must lead.

We know this: What brought you here, to this position in this reality, will not take you to a better place. Nothing will get better unless you undertake things that you couldn’t have imagined doing until just now.

„But that’s not me!“ your laziness wants to defend itself. Yet nobler instances assure you: „Yes, that is you. If you do it, if you allow yourself. If you conquer fear and laziness, then you are exactly that. Then you will say that you have always been that.“

The person who got here will not get out of here. You must become someone else – or sink with the lazy and cowardly. And do not fear too much the accusations that you are right-wing or crazy or that you take all this too seriously. Those are the dry fingers of the lost, who want to drag as many as possible down with them when falling into the abyss.

Yes, someone should shout it from the rooftops. Or at least pass it on to a fellow human. I have done it here, I have told you: The person who brought you here will not get you out of here, so become someone else!

Now you shout it into a fellow human’s ear, whether you are standing on the roof or staying on the carpet – as long as you are heard!