Religion

The Madness Of Moral Monoprinciples

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There’s a book I’ve mentioned a few times here, The Unaccountability Machine. It’s a book of why things in the 21st century suck, how we changed, and how we knew better. The very short form is that businesses (and thus governments and culture) became obsessively focused on stock price/monetary value and went bonkers. We’ve normalized it, we’ve built our culture around it, but it is in the end insane.

Directing your entire life by a single measure, building a world around it, diverting all your resources to it, is a short-term thing. It will break, as we in 2026 are realizing by basically reading the news.

This is business, but let me suggest that it can happen in culture and religion. A kind of Moral Madness where One Thing Matters which supposedly serves as a foundation, but eventually goes completely mad. Call it a Monoprinciple.

The anti-abortion movement in America was my first inkling of this. I’d see politicians, pundits, preachers, and followers utterly obsessed with banning abortion. Everything swirled around that motivation without any kind of moral consistency – no care for actual living children, living women, etc. There was an air of madness about it, a spinning inconsistency, wild-eyed and disturbing – leading to bombings, murder threats and further insanity.

Of course this played to the power of various politicians and preachers, but sometimes I wonder if they ended up riding the tiger they raised from a kitten.

Confucians and filial piety were another thing that got me thinking about Monoprinciples. It’s not hard to read any form of Chinese Philosophy and see something on filial piety and respect for family roles. Anyone who’s dealt with a dysfunctional family knows that such things aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. Though my readings were mostly Taoist, I did read Confucian books and other works of philosophy and history and you can feel those moments writers had to reconcile these issues – usually very poorly.

A hint of madness over the years, trying to reconcile to the reality of some parents just being pieces of shit. A hope for a foundation that wasn’t going to ever be found.

In Influencer-infused Christianity of 2026, as AI write this, there’s a peculiarly shallow madness. Talk of Jesus, of God, of some Christian Principles that are so important. Then people are trying to sell you Bible shoes or preachers are involved in a sex scandal or some Church-scamming politician spews absolute insanity in terms of policy. There’s so many people talking about how they’re so Christian, but it doesn’t seem to mean anything. It’s an empty madness, a hollow phrase, a Monoprinciple that can’t even be examined it’s so hollow.

Everyone wants the One Magic Thing that makes it all work. Or at least lets them convince others it’ll work so they can sell merch and pass the collection plate.

But it won’t work. You can’t invoke one magic principle or one magic name that supposedly Encompasses All Principles. Life’s weird and complex, definitions play into each other, moral actions require careful measurement. Just like the “Line Go Up” madness of the business world was invoked to pay a bill now coming due, it’s the same with moral principles, trying for a single measure will crash, even if you’re no longer around to flee.

It reminds me of the Taoist idea that “having the Tao” provides morals, duty, stability. Having that unity, that sense of connection is where principles come from. But to cling to one thing is to have it all fall apart.

–Xenofact

The Spiritual Dilution of Showing Off

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There’s a religious cycle I see regularly. Someone who’s a Christian, almost inevitably of an Evangelical variety, does some extremely public preaching, often to the inconvenience of others (say, on an airplane). People discussing them inevitably invoke the Bible, Matthew 6:5-6 (give or take):

5. And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

(King James version, naturally)

I’ve seen this quote bought up many times over the decades and never thought about it too much. It’s advice against being a preening asshole and showoff, and hey, good enough for me. These people who supposedly know their Bible might want a refresher course and to also leave us alone.

However the latest round of this inevitable evangelism-leads-to-bible-quoting (a woman annoying people on an airplane) got me thinking. I’d gotten so used to this cycle, but in this case I got thinking about it more deeply. I suspect my own spiritual studies and contemplations of media had me in the right headspace to ask “why is this so important?”

Now I’m all for Jesus’ injunction against showing off spiritual practice. I mean I’m all for public rituals and shared spiritual spaces and the like, those have their place. But also that warning against being some big public religions showoff seemed so obvious I never analyzed it.

So I got to thinking about it. I also didn’t have to think much to realize that such a warning is actually pretty good for people of any religious persuasion. Yes, that includes atheists.

When you’re busy showing off your religious beliefs, really putting on the show for maximum exposure, it’s not about your religious beliefs. It’s about showing off, it’s about being noticed, it’s about whatever agenda you have. You’ve turned serious practice into marketing and influence-chasing.

When you’re in private in your spiritual practice, whatever it is, it’s focusing on the actual practice. The temptations to embellish, to show off, etc. are minimized. But when you’re alone, or maybe in a small group, you’re focused on what you’re supposedly actually trying to do.

When you’re running around in public engaging in aggressive religious behavior then it’s not focused on the supposed goals. It’s just showing off and has nothing to do with deeper beliefs. An emphasis on publicity inevitably leads to hypocrisy, and that’s not good for you or your (possibly unhappy) audience.

If you are actually sincere in your religious beliefs, you risk deadening them (and pissing people off). If you’re not sincere you’re just going to get worse and are probably avoiding the therapy you so desperately need.

I think this also extends, honestly, to public preaching in some cases. At my campus we used to have preachers show up in public space. But know what? They used public space, they kept to their own areas, I can respect that. They weren’t trapping someone on a plane or a bus.

Religious displays need to be approached with caution. You can end up turning your deep beliefs into a performance, and loose that spiritual connection to what you believe.

Also you’re probably being an asshole. But that goes without saying.

–Xenofact

The Beautiful Smallness of Largeness

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We only become more of who we are by opening to the world and opening it up to others.

I’ve worked to find a way to formulate this, and Roberto Unger’s book “The Religion of The Future” (a heavy read but worth it if you’re into religion and psychology) helps. Unger’s idea of a deliberately-constructed religion is one that confronts the impermanence and unsurety of the world to construct a society that would let us grow and develop, being more godlike by being more human. As I put it with affectionate snark, he starts with Buddhist realizations, imagines a functional society with Confucian precision, leading to a world where we hope to evolve ourselves and each other in freedom towards salvation reminiscent of some radical Christian sects.

Unger, even if I question some of his work and opinions, is a deep believer in humanity, and a future and world for all. He wants us to see the spirit, the divine spark, in ourselves and others and to evolve it. If anything, I’d argue his work doesn’t go deep enough into exploring how a view of “let all evolve” is a *spiritual necessity for development* – something I’ve long considered. And now he gives me a launch point I needed.

For those of us familiar with Buddhism and some later syncretic Taoism, the idea of “liberating all” is a vital part of doctrine. One does not just aspire to be liberated from suffering or Attain the Tao, or whatever and walk away. One wishes it for all people, all beings, and in that way, we step out of the shell of our limited ideas of self.

For that, we must walk into the world, and deal with people. We must wish the best for them, not in condescension or false feeling, but on our journey. We have to confront difficult and even dangerous people. This takes us outside of ourselves, our comfort zones. We feel empathy, we put down our barriers, by imagining a world where everyone is “more human and thus more divine.”

Each time we do this, something in us cracks. Boundaries go down. Understanding of people goes up – and thus understanding of ourselves. We remember that we are not separate from the world, we are part of it in a kind of dialogue. We are reminded of how we can evolve and grow – and we do.

Yet, strangely, we also get smaller. We’re less inclined to coddle our biases and bigotries. We’ve got less defined borders. So much of “us” is defined as “not being them” or “not being that” and those are burdens. By letting go so much of us, we become less of what we think we are and more of what we are and who we can be.

You only get to the top by going towards the bottom. So many religious and spiritual practices reminds us to help others, to be engaged in real life, to be there, among the dirt and sadness and reality. That cracks our shells and breaks us so the real us can emerge.

It’s difficult of course. Society is challenging. People can be assholes. But how we relate to people and what kind of world we build is part of our spiritual journey. We just have to figure how to deal with the pathological societies and individuals we face – and how such journeys can help us and others grow. No one said it would be easy, there are no guarantees.

I’d rather become small to become large than walk around in random shackles history gave me.

–Xenofact