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I’ve been trying the keto diet in hopes that it heals inflammation and, therefore, maybe, my asthma. But all it’s really done so far is make me annoyed easier. Do carbs truly make us happy?

Strong convictions

I had a conversation the other day about topics and things I hold strong convictions about. The response I got was mostly the other person trying to poke holes in my strong conviction. They’re attempting to find some sort of “gotcha moment”. Like then I can be “wrong” and made to understand that holding my strong conviction in the first place was the “wrong answer”.

And this is generally what people without strong convictions do to people with strong convictions.

This is what people who don’t know what they value deeply, haven’t taken the journey of developing them, and can articulate them, do. You could call it unintelligent.

In some ways, yes, it is unintelliget but I mostly think it’s lazy and guarded. It’s I don’t want to actually have to explore my belief system, so I’m going to attempt to give you every possible scenario where yours could be wrong.

When someone doesn’t actually know what they value, when they haven’t confronted it or paid a cost for it, the safest move is critique.

Not because critique is intelligent, but because it’s defensive. It keeps them from having to stand for anything themselves (and how could you stand for something so strongly). And then, actually, no one can engage in a conversation of values.

It’s not even really a conversation at that point, when one person becomes the person on a hill with a conviction, and someone below is throwing spears up like maybe they’ll hit. You’re not even on the same playing field. The value of a conviction isn't solely determined by whether it can withstand every possible challenge.

That’s a misunderstanding of what a conviction is and why we have them. Convictions aren’t math proofs, and we must make sure the Pythagorean theorem “pathagums” (you like that word?).

They’re orienting principles: ways of organizing meaning, action, and responsibility. You don’t discard a compass because it can’t account for every possible terrain.

Holding strong beliefs is a fundamental part of human identity.

And when you don’t hold a strong conviction, when instead you are holding a posture of “neutrality” or perceived “openness”, it’s actually a very specific ideological stance you adopt, and it’s something I’m calling: neoliberal neutrality.

Neoliberal neutrality

What people often mistake for “openness” is actually a very specific ideological posture: neoliberal neutrality.

It comes from an economic worldview that treats the market as the most legitimate organizer of human life. In that framework, strong moral convictions are inconvenient. Morals introduce limits. They say no. They resist commodification.

So the ideal subject isn’t someone who believes deeply in anything, but someone who can endlessly choose between options on a shelf. Today I buy white bread, tomorrow I buy wheat bread. I am fluid, adaptable, and uncommitted.

Values are reduced to preferences. Beliefs become personal tastes. Nothing is sacred; everything is negotiable.

From there, conviction starts to look like a threat.

Anything firmly held is labeled “extreme,” “ideological,” or “closed.”

Meanwhile, the person who never takes a position (who critiques every claim and refuses to stand anywhere) is praised as “sophisticated” and “open-minded”. But this isn’t openness. It’s being a true NPC.

For those that don’t know, an NPC means Non-Playable Character. It’s the characters in video games who just walk around. They don’t move the story or narrative forward. They’re just there for show.

It’s moral outsourcing for market dynamics. It’s a holdover from the ideology of the industrial revolution and the flattening of a culture that just wants to make money. In that world, judgment is deferred to systems, experts, consensus, or process, so the individual never has to risk being wrong or responsible.

Business still works like this. THIS IS THE BUSINESS MODEL. Don’t talk politics. Don’t have beliefs or convictions. You might alienate 50% of your customers, and we stand for money and more money and nothing else. I literally heard Kevin O’Leary, one of America’s richest businessmen, say this.

And it’s a sure-fire way for wealth, absolutely. But is that the point of our lives?

This kind of neutrality is the “professionalization” of the working class. The clean, no values, don’t offend anyone, look the same, don’t rustle any feathers culture. It’s a grey Patagonia vest and blue slacks (all finance guys look the same). Make them numb and dumb. They don’t believe in anything but the system, and they follow it in a 9-5 until they’re dead.

And don’t get it wrong, neutrality is your conviction. 

And it’s making you a robot for a system that I know you don’t even like. Your performance of neutrality is what you believe. That you should be infinitely flexible, skeptical, and deferring “neutral” at any one time, while never saying one thing is ever better than another.

Convictions matter because it’s how people decide what matters, what they’ll sacrifice for, and what lines they won’t cross (or even what wars they will cross for). A person without convictions is unlocated. Untethered. Often deeply anxious beneath the performance of neutrality. I can’t put you anywhere, and you don’t know who you are either.

A call back to believing

Neoliberal culture also empties public life of moral substance. Politics becomes managerial (we’re managing interactions rather than defining which ones we allow in our society and moving from there). Ethics becomes technical. Education instead becomes a training in analyzing and deconstructing, but not in committing.

Conviction is framed as dangerous because it can’t be optimized or neutralized. So critique becomes the default posture for conversation style (literally watch most liberal political media and you will see it). It’s a style not in the service of truth, but as a way to avoid locating oneself, one's core beliefs, morals, and values, at all.

This is why neutrality is a choice, not a virtue.

This is why we have to be reminded that values cost something.

This is why to believe in anything is to risk conflict, exclusion, and consequence.

And so the neutral stance reaches for hypotheticals and gotchas, not to understand, but to pull everyone back into the safety of ambiguity.

A society that treats conviction as pathology is easier to manage, easier to manipulate, and easier to sell to.

I sure as all heck know I don’t want to be someone like that. I am sovereign and autonomous. I am in charge of my own life, and I sit at the seat of my own personal power, and I will attempt to lead a life where I am not an NPC. 

The Hill

If this is something you’re interested in exploring, I’ll leave you with this: an exercise in finding your values.

Try this prompt:

1. “If you had to stand on one hill for the rest of your life, and defend it, not with words, but with consequences, what would that hill be?”

2. Try to stay constrained in your response. You only get one sentence.

3. It must begin with “I am willing to lose ___ for ___.”

Take as much time as you need here. Let me know what you think!

And remember, neutrality survives on an infinite number of options.

Conviction requires choosing one.

Love,
Val

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