There Is No Neutral Ground
"The myth of neutrality operates as an ideological shield, assumed to be impartial, unbiased, and therefore, the fairest of all options amongst a world of competing ideologies."
One of the most persistent myths in the modern world is the idea of neutrality.
We’re told our governments can be neutral. That our institutions can be neutral. That our schools can be neutral. That our courts can be neutral. That our media organisations, bureaucracies, and entertainment can all function from a position of value-free objectivity. Nothing but the brute facts.
But neutrality is a myth, and not a thing in the world that cloaks itself in neutrality is the absence of a worldview with values, ideals, and beliefs.
Every institution is built on a foundation of assumptions about truth, human nature, morality, and authority. So, the question is not whether a thing is biased, but whether the assumptions behind that thing are hidden or acknowledged.
When any society declares its public institutions are “neutral,” as many in the Western world now do, what it often means in practice is that a particular worldview has been so thoroughly normalised that it no longer appears ideological at all.
In other words, it becomes the air people breathe. It is invisible, but it is still everywhere, and in everything. And then anything that challenges it is immediately perceived as an assault on neutrality, which in turn is immediately labelled “biased.”
This is how the modern myth of neutrality functions. It’s not a genuine absence of religion and ideological conviction, but rather, the dominance of one set of convictions that refuses to admit its own existence.
Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the modern education system.
Government schools are often described as neutral spaces where children are simply taught “critical thinking,” free of ideological indoctrination and religious assumptions. But critical thinking does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. It always operates within a framework of assumptions about what counts as knowledge, what counts as evidence, and what counts as acceptable reasoning.
As such, students are not simply learning brute facts about the universe. They’re being formed into a way of viewing the world. They’re being given a worldview—that is, glasses through which all of life is to be viewed and interpreted.
The same is true of the media, politics, law, and every other institution and organisation that claims to operate free of ideological input.
Now, you might think it’s all just semantics. But there’s more at stake here than just a squabble about appropriate words and labels. This is because the claim to neutrality has become a form of authority in itself. It doesn’t merely describe reality; it defines the boundaries and limits of acceptable reality.
To question the dominant assumptions is not simply to disagree with the prevailing narrative. It is to be marked as biased, extreme, or even dangerous.
In this sense, the myth of neutrality operates as an ideological shield, assumed to be impartial, unbiased, and therefore, the fairest of all options amongst a world of competing ideologies.
Thus, by its amorphous and elusive definition, “neutrality” effectively transcends any and all criticism, as every critique can be dismissed as fundamentally biased.
But no society can maintain this illusion indefinitely. Sooner or later, the blind assumptions of the “neutral” institutions are revealed—in what they teach, what they punish, and what they celebrate.
And so, the question is not whether there is a bias, but what that bias is. It’s not whether a worldview will shape public life, but which worldview is being assumed. And this is exactly why the myth of neutrality has been so powerful. It persuades people to stop asking that question.
But every society must decide what it considers true, what it considers good, and what it is willing to defend, protect, and preserve.
There is no neutral ground on which to avoid that question. Only the false appearance of it.