psychology

They’re Not Gods

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I was walking near the ocean recently, and just in awe of the power in front of me. There on the coast, water stretching to the horizon, I felt what men had felt since they first looked out upon it: awe. It was beautiful, powerful, otherworldly. That’s the moment you understand gods and how people relate to them.

The power runs deep, and you give it a name to talk to it.

This led me, sadly, to less theistic pursuits as I contemplated the men who would act as gods. Titans of industry, dictators, Influencers, and the like. People high on power who act as if they are geniuses, are divinely touched, as if they can steer the world. But they’re not gods, not at all.

They don’t love their element, their domain. Do they delight in the play of clouds as a sky-god would or feel desert winds in their blood? Are the creatures of their territory something they protect, bringing curses on the disrespectful? Do they adore something so much they are it?

No, they’re people who own, who want to hold it in their hand, but not care or respect, or be.

They don’t wield real power, there’s no divinity, or the mystic virtue, Te of the Tao Te Ching. They use existing systems and hacks and PR teams and the like. Many of them are people who, quite frankly, would be irritating to deal with, and only got lucky or had an inheritance. All seem small, desperately clinging to power, to the system they learned to manipulate, kowtowing easily.

There’s no power there. I can at least think of some scientists and businesspeople and philosophers who had a spark, a confidence, a power. These false gods don’t.

Can these aspiring godlings be actually loved, or appreciated beyond syncophanty and propaganda? They’re not anything. Gods at least are something, even if some are unpleasant. They have their spheres, their powers, their reality. The men who would be gods are in the end just faking it, and don’t care.

It’s all bottom lines and ego boosts. There’s nothing there. A god at least feels and is.

If anything a lot of our modern would-be gods feel like they’re aping the jealous god of the modern Christian, that old no-daddy. Jealous, manipulative, insecure, yanking people around, demanding obedience. The abusive father figure so many chose in place of Jesus and Christian mystics and the like.

They’re nod gods, and are all the more pathetic for their pretensions.

There on the Ocean I felt small, but these would be-gods were so much smaller.

There on the Ocean, I knew the joy of the Truly Large.

-Xenofact

Very Verb Indeed

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“I Seem to be a Verb”

– Title of a book by Buckminster Fuller.

We want to think of ourselves as solid things and are eternally thwarted. Yes, we age, but that’s the easy example of how we are processes. We learn, we grow, put on muscle, cut our hair, go through puberty, and so on. We are objects perhaps in the physical sense, but really we’re actions – often unconscious ones.

Just reading the above your mind changed and altered and responded and contemplated.

However, we strive to be objects in many ways. We like sameness, we like things to be sure, we like solidity. We are of course never successful, albeit temporarily, and part of maturity is understanding we are actions. To be something definitive is to maintain intentionally.

I’ve come to realize just how meditative processes help us understand that – but also how understanding that helps us meditate.

As I’ve gone on about near-endlessly my meditative practice was initially informed by The Secret of the Golden Flower. The book has a lovely, simple summary of meditation – refine the breath to be slow and even while the mind rests on breath. Yes there’s more – Taoists being excellent and warning of the limits of words then using a lot of them – but it’s a useful, simple summation that one can build on.

In my own practices of course I’ve found that it is both that simple and infinitely more complex. But one thing I recently realized in my meditations is that meditation is action. Yes you’re sitting there, but it’s active.

You are there breathing, ever tuning your breath. Your mind is resting on your breath, ever directed onto the breath. You do these things, you do them together, and you sit there. You are engaging in action when you meditate.

What’s interesting is that there’s nothing to have there, nothing to be. You’re ever-refining breath and mind, but there’s no object to hold to. Slower. More even. Mind ever on the depths of breathing. You’re there just acting (albeit in a very quiet manner).

There are many benefits, insights, and signs in meditation – and I am cautious when talking about them as past writers have wisely warned. But I am comfortable in saying that my meditations have, among many things, helped me see how we really are actions. Sitting there doing is going to bring insights on doing – and when you are an action those insights have effects.

Of course that’s an obvious insight, but there’s having it intellectually then going and experiencing it – which I strongly recommend. But we’re actions. We don’t seem to be verbs, we are verbs.

-Xenofact

Conspiracy Theory As Laziness

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I am, as regular readers know, interested in Conspiracy Theories. I want to know how people work, how the world works, and honestly what to be aware of that may kill me. There’s some people out there who’ve not only gone down the rabbit hole, they turned it into a bunker, and we’re the ones on the outside.

Something that’s struck me over time – and something I want to organize my thoughts around, so you get to read them – is that Conspiracy Theorists are lazy.

This may seem strange to say as Conspiracy Theorists are pretty busy. They’re arguing online. They’re obsessed with “following the crumbs.” The joke of the Conspiracy Theorist with a corkboard of pins and strings and newspaper clippings at least credits them with some industry.

But it’s not industry.

For those who believe in the Conspiracy Theories to some extent, they’re entertainment and they’re a substitute. They’re not real effort, they’re essentially a game, a Live Action Role-Play, aka LARP. Nothing actually gets done, nothing happens, there’s no actual end game, and when one theory wears out the latest takes it’s place.

For the grifters, these efforts are easier than having an actual job. You just spew BS, and make sure to dress it up right and people believe you and spend money. Heck, most conspiracy theorist grifters are just dressing up old biases and theories in new digs and putting them out there. It’s no different – and very much the same – as the millionaire preacher who puts in a few hours of spewing quotes and then goes back to their mansion.

The grifters rely on the believers to do the work by staying occupied with trying to hunt up clues and whatever. The lying grifters put in less effort than the people who are bored or who would rather read internet posts than change the world.

And this is where Conspiracy Theories get really lazy.

Conspiracy Theories are easy. Most of them are well-worn biases with a few extra modernizations. You have someone else to blame, you’re blameless, and to fight them you don’t do anything that actually fixes things. Reaching out to your fellow humans, getting involved in politics, actually being informed is hard and requires you to confront uncomfortable truths. Just being biased and claiming you’re fighting the Deep State is a lot easier.

Of course this makes it easier on the grifters and easier on more malicious political actors. People trapped in their own made up Conspiracy LARP AND ready to blame people AND ask you to do all the work? Score for any would be dictator and money-hungry manipulator.

I thus have some sympathy for Conspiracy Theorists in this way. I get being lazy, wanting to play with ideas, and stuff is hard. It’s just in the end it’s better to deal with real issues and deal with the real world – and take on the people manipulating us. Also a lot of professional Conspiracy Theorists are utter a-holes, so screw them.

But I do get it sometimes.

However in the end, Conspiracy Theory is just lazy, but the wrong kind of lazy.

–Xenofact