Culture

The Inevitable Cult of Wealth

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A lot of wealthy people seem to be in cults, and I’m not just talking your standard Right Wing Christian Crap. As I write this in October 2026 we’re getting reporting on strange cults of Artificial Intelligence, rationalism, Antichrist obsessives, and more. People are looking at billionaires and going “what the hell did they say” and “what drugs are they on” (Ketamine of course, but also my guess is plenty of psychedelics). There’s surprise at this cultic behavior, and honestly there really shouldn’t be.

Imagine you’re wealthy for whatever reason. You can shape your entire experience to be whatever you want. People will do whatever you want because you have money (and possibly fame and power). You can exist the exact way you want with little to no pushback.

Oh you may think you’re not living an illusion, but unless you’re very careful, you will. If you can change the world with a transaction, people will like to you, suck up to you, or worse assume you’re right as you have money. Even if you’re careful, you’ll have to work hard not to delude yourself because others will help you do just that.

Being rich and powerful leads to an echo chamber and eventually a kind of cognitive impairment. Ever seen a Really Rich person just freak out at a random social media post? Someone living in a self-imposed bubble will loose their shit over something posted by some anonymous person with a handle like BannanaCannon420.

Now such environments will lead to cultic behavior – even if it’s a cult of one. You’re in your own self-created bubble. You’re creating a feedback loop. You’ve got people willing to tell you what you want to hear (often for money). That’s a cult.

But also think of these echo chambers these people live in. If a cultic behavior or set of ideas are introduced there’s a good chance it won’t leave and will be amplified. It just takes one doofus with the right (or wrong) idea, one self-published manifesto, to get into the sphere of some rich person and then the bad idea stays and grows. They may even share it with their friends, who are also wealthy and honestly probably kind of bonkers.

So yes, some of the uber-wealthy act like they’re in cults – they are. They exist in self-created echo chambers. Bad ideas don’t get flushed out. They talk to other people like them. And that’s not counting important questions like “is the economy structured so utter assholes easily take control.”

Honestly, once you add the asshole factor it gets worse. I’m being kind.

So maybe in our current state we need to consider the rich and powerful to be in some kind of cult by default until proven otherwise. And it’s another reminder of why consolidation of power of any kind is a problem – because culty behavior follows almost inevitably, even with the most charitable viewpoint.

–Xenofact

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

They Will Still Kill You

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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