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Dogma

Some ideas are not allowed to be wrong. That should make you nervous.

Dogma is any principle that an authority declares beyond debate. It does not ask for your agreement through evidence — it demands your acceptance through obedience. We associate dogma with religion, and that is fair: sacred texts treated as literally perfect, doctrines that cannot be revised regardless of what we learn. But the pattern is not religious in nature. It is structural. Any institution can produce dogma when its authority depends more on consistency than on truth.

Political dogma works the same way. Party lines that members must repeat regardless of personal experience. Economic theories treated as natural law despite repeated failure. Even science — a system explicitly designed to revise itself — develops dogmatic pockets when careers and funding depend on certain conclusions remaining unchallenged.

The problem with dogma is not that the idea is always wrong. Sometimes it is perfectly correct. The problem is that you are forbidden from checking. And an idea you are not allowed to test is an idea someone needs you to stop thinking about. The next time you encounter a principle that comes with the warning "do not question this," pay attention. Not to the principle — to the warning.

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