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My Convictions in July of 2025

I was encouraged to do this exercise by a therapist a couple years ago. I don't have the notebook I wrote it in anymore so I thought I'd give it another go.

This is a list of things I believe with 100% certain, unwavering conviction. If I strongly suspect something to be true but have room for doubt, it's not included here. There are certainly subject to change. I may look back at this list in a few years and be horrified that I could ever believe such awful things. But as of July 13, 2025, these are things I believe with every fiber of my soul.

The list is by no means comprehensive. I'm sure I left some things out but I tried to be thorough. It's also just arranged alphabetically, not by order of importance or anything.

  1. A good deed done for hope of a reward is not a good deed. This applies not only to things like Instagram likes but to bigger concepts like heaven and karma.
  2. A group is only as strong as its weakest member, as safe as its most vulnerable, as benevolent as its most malicious, as educated as its most ignorant. This applies to everything from families to nations to religions to online MMORPG guilds.
  3. A person can only learn and grow if they embrace uncertainty and ignorance. A person who refuses to acknowledge when they're wrong will never learn and never grow.
  4. Anyone who claims absolute certainty in complex political, social, and ethical issues is being willfully obtuse and arrogant.
  5. Anyone who claims absolute certainty of God or a lack thereof is either lying to themselves or to others. This includes not only God's existence, but his/her/their/its preferences, rules for humanity, operations, etc.
  6. Abortions and family planning services should be legal, safe, accessible, and ubiquitous.
  7. All people have equal inherent value.
  8. Certain acts are always immoral and can never be justified under any realistic circumstances. The ones I can think of (in no order, obviously some are worse than others) are: rape, sexual assault/abuse, abuse of children, elderly, or otherwise physically defenseless/harmless individuals, animal abuse, scamming/phishing strangers, genocide, slavery/human trafficking, domestic abuse, revenge porn, systematic oppression based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, etc., utilization of child soldiers, weaponized starvation/disease.
  9. Climate change, in terms of urgency and scale, is currently the most important problem facing humanity.
  10. Empathy is the most important human virtue.
  11. From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
  12. Morality is real and it comes from empathy and imagination.
  13. Nature as a whole is more important than humanity.
  14. No one should be allowed to become a billionaire.
  15. Science is our best tool for understanding and learning about the universe around us. It's not perfect, but it's better than all the alternatives.
  16. The best thing you can do for a child is to surround them with books.
  17. Tradition, by itself, is not a good enough reason to justify in act.

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