Culture

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

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 Tiny Men Who Can’t Solve Anything

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Last column I wrote about how in our spiritual journeys, opening up to others is part of the path, that somehow by being smaller we become big, how we become more human and more divine by wanting the same for others. I’d like to talk about the opposite in painful and obvious detail.

So let’s cut to the chase. The racists, sexists, and bigot grifters that bedevil us make themselves and others smaller.

It seems we’re currently beset by a bunch of public bigots, Influencers of hatred, high on something beyond their own supply (probably ketamine or uppers) who are so ready to declare themselves superior. Their culture is superior (even as it churns out the same slop). Their genes are superior (they say from the position of luck). They are superior and they must fight the bad people (who look different and think different and also don’t send them money).

So thus the real thing is to fight the bad people, who somehow often seem to be the poor, immigrants, and various minorities. They’re the threat. Sometimes the bigots will invoke ANOTHER group to blame them for the threat. And by that I mean, 90% of the time, that eternal scapegoat – Jewish people. These bigots say we must fight the bad guys to preserve our culture, and by that they mean hate people and revive old bigotries.

But what is the culture of these small and angry bigots? A washed out Disney-meets-fascism version of real history. It’s often someones modern idea of the 1950’s idea of the 1800’s idea of the past. They’re preserving an image of an image of an image so many layers deep Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard would utterly shit themselves if they saw it.

There’s no growth to these haters’ idea of culture. it’s all about a replica of an imagined replica. It’s all about going back, not going forward or even going at all. It’s destructive, it’s isolating, and it’s not real – nor was it ever.

And thus there’s no real culture for these bigots except a simulacra of a simulacra. Burdened with hate, lashing out at easy targets, they’re constantly attacking others verbally if not physically. Their entire existence is attack for the purpose of nothing but a temporary high.

As they go on, unsatisfied, they only get more angry. Ultima Thule, Atlantis, the City on a Hill will never come because they can’t build. They will never have the illusinary genetic purity they crave for some reason because they’ll find reason to attack anyone as that’s all they have. Eternally unsatisfied, the Hungry Ghosts of Buddhism armed with bats and guns, making bad AI memes.

They are so very small and making themselves smaller.

They cannot develop a better society as they are trying to go back to an illusion. They can’t become larger people because they are cutting off the world, the people in it, and thus cutting off themselves. They think they are getting larger, but they are becoming so very, very small behind their walls. You’d almost pity them, perhaps you do – but it’s hard as they’re both so stupid and so vicious.

They’re spending so much time cutting off parts of the world they’re cutting off parts of themselves.

They could be larger, they could expand, they could grow, they could evolve. They could walk into this diverse world and be part of it. They could become smaller and thus become larger. But instead they try to be large and mutilate their souls, becoming so very, truly small.

–Xenofact