Conspirituality

Screaming Through The Cracks

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I’ve previously speculated that some conspiracy theorists and spiritual grifters don’t so much have beliefs, but an internal narrative they’re trying to keep up. These people are constantly telling a story, and can’t really interact with people so much as constantly self-soothe by making their internal narrative external. I believe I’ve witnessed a case of someone transitioning to this stage.

Unfortunately, it’s Russell Brand. So this might get rough because he’s painful to deal with.

I had followed Brand with some interest because of his transition from weird actor to accused sex criminal to weird right-wing anti-science religious crank. There was something strange about the man, but the podcast/videocast On Brand helped me understand Brand better – though be warned, if you listen to On Brand, you’ll find Russel even more annoying in large doses.

They had been following Brand for some time, and analyzing him. This got into my sphere as it intersected with my interests in conspiracy theories, politics, religion, and medicine. Russell had been heading for crankdom for some time, but the accusations of committing sex crimes seems to have accelerated his decline – obviously crying “conspiracy” is a way to insulate himself.. Curious about what I might learn about him, I tuned in to On Brand, and faced the verbal firehose that is Brand.

Russell is a fast talker, what one wit once called his “Artful dodger” routine. He comes on fast, goes in loops, says the same things many times, asks and answers his own questions and keeps going. He also will talk to utterly objectionable people while still maintaining he’s all about Jesus, love, humanity, and so on – and of course he keeps going. There’s not a moment of self-relfection in there, and in fact it takes time to figure if he’s talking about anything.

(Often he isn’t).

But as I listened, while only occasionally regretting my choices, I could feel him trying to make leaps of logic to deal with his situation. Verbal diarrhea to try to not deal with what he’s talking about, throwing out questions as opposed to answers, and constantly not settling on any one thing. The man wasn’t just trying to do a narrative, it felt outright avoidant of reality or any form of solidity.

There was a painfulness to it, not just cringe, but it felt like part of him knew he was full of bullshit. Brand wasn’t to the stage where he was entirely lost in his narrative, he knew down deep he was bullshitting, or at least wasn’t good enough to cover up the fact he was. Somewhere in there was a person that knew he was full of it.

It was unsettling. Brand’s an objectionable person, probably outright sex criminal (if not yet tried), and is probably going to end up founding a cult before things degenerate. But he didn’t have the decades some would-be gurus had, didn’t quite have his story as smooth, and you could tell. There was a bit of cringe, a bit of fear, just enough that you knew he knew what he was.

An actor that knew he was acting while ignoring his own acts.

In time, I’m sure he’ll be lost in his narrative. But for now I could look at the man, listen to him, and see someone in transition to that constant narrative, that endless self-soothing. Much as my first experience with Knowledge Fight helped me see self-soothing behavior in conspiracy figures, On Brand helped me see the transition.

I saw an awful person who still had bits of humanity in the cracks, as he worked to seal them away. I see people like him and how they work to be awful, and see how much work goes into becoming such monstrous, devouring, living narratives. It’s uglier than I would have thought.

  • Xenofact

Maybe It Can Never Be Big

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The Industrialized spirituality of our modern world gets to me. The Ayahuasca retreats where narcissistic techo-bros take an ancient drug with no guidance or knowledge, only becoming more of their shallow selves. Churned-out big budget mysticism 101 books that are the same or worse as that of a decade, a century, an aeon ago. It’s a clicking-clacking machine of sameness where any depth is accidental.

I mean faux-mysticism has been with us forever, albeit at smaller scale since people didn’t have the technology to efficiently spread bullshit on a global level Fake grimoires copied over and over again to deceive royalty. Cults that become governments. Some grifter is always ready to monetize and mechanize spirituality.

At the same time, it’s fascinating to read of small-scale spirituality. People who lovingly copied books for friends and families. Small folios – for instance I own a book on Taoist energetics clearly easy to copy and pass on. Even strange little creations of today, vanity press creations that may be divine madness, or at least one of the two. It’s always been there and it’s there today, and a lot healthier than the latest spiritual bestseller that’s been the same book for five decades.

Now I’m sure some of these “industrial spiritualists” are sincere. But the results speak for themselves, the great sea of uninsightful sameness. Even sincere and smart people may spiral down into the same old same old.

I look, and I think spirituality, really healthy spirituality, can’t be done at a large scale, even sincerely. You can have large organizations, but they need to support the personal touches – and guard against becoming generic. You have to be careful of making stars and rockstars out of your people.

When you industrialize spirituality, you welcome grifters. There are people who are glad to take advantage of scale to profit at scale. That’s no reason to, say, not publish a lot of copies of things like the Tao Te Ching or whatever, but that’s the basics and the historic.

When you industrialize spirituality you have to generalize. There’s only so much you can do it before it becomes washed out and meaningless. You can try to write for a generalized audience, but even the most benevolent will risk generalizing to much.

Besides, spiritual practice needs personal touches. You need that one book that’s just right, that extra post from someone on a forum, or something that fits you. As much as I am skeptical of gurus, I get why many a Buddist or Taoist practitioner talks of needing “mind to mind transmission.” It has to fit you.

The at-scale spirituality we see see now probably can’t generate what people really need, since they need different things at different time with actual depth. Probably some clever, smart, persistent people could do it, but I’m not sure it’d be worth the effort in the end. Time is probably best spent figuring out how to get people the intimate, networked, personal spiritual experiences they need.

– Xenofact

They Believe Differently

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“Do they believe it or not?”

We ask that question of many a grifter, politician, preacher, media personality, and probably more people close to us than we’d like. Is the bullshit and paranoia coming out of their mouths real, or are they basically making it up and lying? We’d like to know so we can be upset with them properly, and in a few cases get the hell away or alert people.

It’s easy to see this as a binary. People believe or they don’t, with some but not significant wiggle room. It’s more or less truth or lying, right? However I’d like to suggest we’re missing a larger scale – maybe some people we deal with (the grifters and conspiracy theorists and the like) believe differently than a simple binary that probably applies to the majority of people.

Some people don’t have beliefs, but a narrative they’re eternally juggling to keep up, often for reasons that are, well, grifty and self-serving. We all have narratives, but these people are the narrative with far less person in there.

. . . I’d better explain.

I’m a fan of the podcast Knowledge Fight, where two sort-of-former comedians analyze infamous conspiracy theorist/grifter/harasser Alex Jones. As the two hosts, Dan and Jordan, are performers they bring a unique understanding to people like Jones. Being a kind of whatever-works bottom feeder who rose to the top, Jones is an excellent case study of people like him.

In one episode, Dan realized that Jones’ various interviews, comments, etc. were not really engaging people. They were self-soothing internal narratives that were externalized, ever seeking to deal with the chaotic mess inside his head. Jones is clearly an insecure person raised on conspiracy theories, eternally in a media bubble since his youth. His “human” interactions were just him constantly stating, validating, and reinforcing the juggling act that was inside his brain – that of a tale where he was the hero.

The comment by Dan stuck with me, and I brought that “is this internal narrative” to listening to Jones and other people of his ilk. Though I’m sure I brought my own biases, many sounded like that. Self-aggrandizing stories, weird insertions of extra data to keep up their mental frameworks, constant pushing for viewpoints to be confirmed. People who constantly sought a kind of self-validation writ as a grander narrative of conspiracy and religion and technology or whatever.

They did not believe anything. They were just trying to keep their story straight, the story where they were always right and good – and made a lot of money and were famous and sold merch. It wasn’t a belief or a lack of belief, it was juggling the tale.

Also I noticed how painful these people seemed inside. There was something to their narratives that were empty, no one was really home, they just had the tales. There was neediness, emptiness, craving, and below that a weird raging anger that didn’t have a point. It was like they were angry for all the bad things they might feel.

(And yes, this recalls a kind of Hungry Ghost).

So no, some people don’t believe or disbelieve. They’re just weaving a story because that’s all they have. They don’t even have the solidity of lying to count on.

-Xenofact