I’ve come to a place where I don’t feel the need to fight every belief anymore. As long as a belief isn’t harming someone, physically, psychologically, or financially, I’m okay letting it be. And that’s a big shift for me, because I used to think that bad ideas had to be confronted everywhere, all the time. Living honestly and courageously meant that I had to be an activist.
Over time, as the rock-polisher does to rocks, this idea lost some of its rough edges. I’ve realized something: beliefs, by themselves, are cheap. Harm is expensive.
What I care about now isn’t whether a belief is true in some abstract sense, but whether it predictably causes harm, especially when it’s paired with power, vulnerability, or scale. If someone believes something odd, spiritual, or even irrational, and it helps them cope or make sense of their life, I don’t see that as my problem to solve.
Where I would be compelled to step in is when beliefs start justifying control, silencing doubt, trapping people psychologically, or mobilizing harm, particularly toward the vulnerable – children, dependents, or marginalized groups. That’s when belief stops being private and starts becoming structural, systemic, pernicious.
I underestimated how corrosive it is to live in permanent argument mode. Constantly bickering about beliefs doesn’t make society healthier; it makes people defensive, polarized, and less capable of changing their minds. I don’t want to become a mirror image of the dogmatism I walked away from.
So my default is cognitive freedom. My exception is harm.
I’m not trying to convert everyone to my worldview anymore. I’m trying to protect people’s ability to leave, to question, and to revise their beliefs without fear. To me, that’s the real moral line.
In a pluralistic society, the goal isn’t to eliminate wrong beliefs, it’s to prevent beliefs from becoming weapons. And I think that’s a much more sustainable way to live, both personally and socially.
My 2 cents 