Culture

The Madness Of Moral Monoprinciples

by

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

They Will Still Kill You

by

When people discuss conspiracy theorists and political operators and the like, the question often comes up “do they believe this?” This question embodies many facets – a search for authenticity, a desire to understand, wanting to counter, and so on. Such a quest is often frustrating, as the solid answers elude us even as we delve in to peoples beliefs. We are through the looking glass and it feels like someone is laughing at us.

I’ve seen this come up recently in August 2026 as people once again ask “hey do these various racists in racist movements believe their extreme rhetoric.” The conclusion as of late – perhaps understandably – is “yes, these people do believe it and they will kill people.” But I’d like to argue that the conclusion is partially right and misses the point at the same time.

Before I’ve stated that there is a subset of people whose political beliefs are narratives about themselves – hero stories essentially. They do not so much believe as want to maintain a narrative about themselves. Their beliefs and actions are a juggling act to maintain the story and their own sense of identity.

Now I suspect a lot of people’s real political and spiritual beliefs are like this. In this performative age where the culture and the technology grinds at us to be Influencers one way or another, I think we all run the risk of being narratives without a person attached. But that aside, how many people actually believe the extreme things they say and how many, well, just say it?

It doesn’t matter. The question is not “do they believe?” It is “will they kill us?”

Yes, people who really believe something bad will kill people. We know this from all of human history. Good people believing something bad will kill people. That’s pretty clear.

But the people who are trying to maintain a narrative, maintain a story, the people with Influencer brain will kill you just the same. They may be worse because they don’t even have hard beliefs to change.

Think of all the people who live in the spotlight, who have turned their lives into shows and stories. They have to maintain their image or suffer a kind of living death as their egos are punctured. Their income may depend on weaving the right story to sell merch and advertising hits. They will do whatever it takes, change their story, alter it, add to it, or deny it to meet their needs.

Of course they will gladly advocate for the death of others. You don’t need some hearty belief that people should die to want people dead. All you need is a story so important the lives of others are just decoration, where your tall tale about yourself matters more than actual humans. All you need are people who think they’re main characters and you’re an NPC.

It’s not how much you believe, it’s how many deaths you’ll cause. When it comes to survival, maybe “actually believing” isn’t the first thing we should worry about. Maybe it’s “who will kill us?”

–Xenofact

The Spiritual Dilution of Showing Off

by

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