Psychology

You Think We’d Kind Of Be Used To It

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So as I write this in 2025, a predicted Rapture just didn’t happen. I know, failed Raptures have been predicted ever since a few people made up the idea in the 1830s. But this Rapture, it felt different, more present in the media, more widespread, more manic. I honestly think the internet part of the phenomena.

Suddenly religious and cultural commentators I followed, podcasts I listened to, and so on were talking people getting ready for the Rapture. Of course that quickly turned into people disappointed the Rapture didn’t happen. It just all happened so fast it was a crash course in crashing eschatology that was pretty widespread.

By the time you read this who knows how many other failed Raptures will have happened. Maybe we can get a Rapture of the Month club going.

I wondered just how could people fall for this again? The failed Rapture prediction is a fixture of Christian history, a long-running cautionary tale that people still need to be cautioned against. I mean the weird 2012 “prophecies” didn’t happen, assorted failed predictions have dotted the American cultural landscape for decades, and don’t we go through this every few years?

After some analysis while writing this column (which mutated from its original intent as I wrote it) is that The Rapture predictions aren’t about the Rapture – and today’s technology has hit a point that changes how and why information spread.

Once you poke around history – and watch the most recent Not-Rapture – it becomes very apparent how much psychology is involved. A person or people under crisis. A time of change or turmoil in history. Historical happenings raising questions that lead people to want simple answers. Personal issues and large-scale social and economic issues leading people to want an out.

The Rapture isn’t a coming event, it’s a sign something’s gone on, that people are troubled or seeking something. It’s the echo of a scream shouted into a world that’s not the way people wanted. There was a desperation I hadn’t seen before.

However, as I watched this spread across the Internet, it’s also a reminder of how our social media provides a vector for ideas to spread. Long gone are the days of books of prophecy and media figures preaching The Rapture. A single idea can spread from person to person, person to crowd, crowd to crowd in ways that weren’t imaginable 30 years ago.

Moreso, there are people whos goal is to be an Influencer – even if they call it something else. So many of us are taught to crave social media hits and a widespread audience, and the benefits that entails. I think for many this desire is unconscious or semi-conscious.

The Rapture is a great way to get attention, pure Influencer bait.

Combine troubled times and Influencer Brain and you’ve got a great recipe for the latest Rapture story to spread to people’s brains. Even if there are skeptical people, skepticism isn’t spreading while the latest Influencer Idea is. They network around any skeptics.

What do we do with that? I have no idea. But it’s a reminder any communications strategy we may need to address such viral ideas is going to have to take motivation into mind as well as the technology that boosts it.

Because we’ll go through this again soon enough.

–Xenofact

The Place Of Death

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In The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 50, there’s a line about people who’ve attained the Tao that translates as “they have no place of death to enter,” “they have no place of death in them” or “for them there is no place in the land of death.” I’d not thought much about this chapter or this line until recently until a mix of meditation and stressful events gave me a new understanding.

In analyzing my own fears and concerns, I saw how they would obsess me. I’d worry about things, and thus my fears, from death to petty things, were actually part of me. I’d carry my concerns with me constantly, and as you doubtlessly know that was a heavy burden.

But being isolated, worrying, etc. just cuts me off from myself. It keeps me from engaging with life – with the Tao. It keeps me from being truly alive, freezing me in place. Honestly we all know too well how fears and worries can lock us down and even lead to bad outcomes – sometimes the very ones we feared.

There in my head, is the Place of Death.

Life, I realized, is a dialogue. You’re constantly reacting and interacting with places, people, ideas, food, etc. You make judgements and evaluations, changing or maintaining your course. Being alive, really alive, really there in the Tao, is a conversation.

And you can’t really have a dialogue when you’re hiding away. Life has to be lived, engaged. You can’t freeze yourself in your head or loop with scenarios to “protect” yourself.

Before I had talked about what I call “The Escape Capsule” in psychology and psychoanatomy. We build a walled off part of ourselves, shoving our supposed “self” into a box inside of us to protect it. This produces tension, warps our concept of ourselves, creates physical discomfort, and is quite miserable.

The “Escape Capsule” and “The Place of Death” are close to or are the exact same thing. Trying to get away from a changing world means you carry the changes you fear with you.

Life is a dialogue, really embracing yourself and the universe means you’re engaging. You can’t hide away in that case, you have to be open and vulnerable – because that’s how you have the dialogue with the world. The attempts to escape just lead you to build a mausoleum in your head.

It might be hard, but we can’t run away or stew in our fears. Why have a place for Death in us? Death has its own place in the world. We might as well find our place as well.

-Xenofact

Confucians and Conspiracy Theorists

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When I first encountered Taoism, I became aware of their conflicts with Confucians. Later when I took a deeper interest, this “awareness” turned into “wow for a while they really mocked the crap out of them.” Later still, I realized this mockery of Confucians really helped me better understand Conspiracy Theorists.

Strap in for this one.

The history of Confucianism, and the period it was in conflict with Taoists, is complicated, but a few trends stood out in my studies. Political philosophy Taoism (embodied in the Tao Te Ching) were more about psychology, frugality, not seeking complexity, and leaving people the heck alone. Confucianism was seen as ritualistic, rote, and about memorization of trivial bits and bobs of culture. The conflict was simple – “real life” and pointless trivialities.

But something began to tickle at the back of the mind in my recent readings and re-readings. The Taoist documents that mocked Confucians mocked them for pretention, ritualism, trivialities, and over-complicated ideas. Even later Taoist/Taoist inspired documents that felt they had commonalities with other philosophies warned against such things. Be it mocking the Confucians or warning against pointless ritualism, something seemed familiar.

Then it struck me. The Confucians that Taoists mocked – and the people that later Taoists critiqued – reminded me of conspiracy theorists.

Conspiracy theorists have huge, complex beliefs they spin into webs, ensaring them – and if possible, others. Conspiracy theorists are often repetitive – in ritual ways – reinforcing their conspiracies (which often need it). Finally Conspiracy theorists are often deep in trivialities, to the point it’s hard to understand what the hell they’re talking about – the cultic conspiracy elements that wall people off others.

Plus, Conspiracy theorists often seem very brittle and ready to use force to control you, something Taoists also mocked in general and specific.

Suddenly I got the earlier Taoist mockery. I’ve watched puffed-up Conspiracy theorists, confidently spewing nonsense, spinning elaborate incoherence, and arguing they get to decide right and wrong, life and death. Be it some earlier Confucian wonk or the latest maniac analyzed by the near-endless podcasts on Conspiracy theorists, they’re the same.

Thus, I get why some people 3000 years ago said “look at those pretentious motherfuckers.”

Now that I have this unusual insight, maybe there’s really some kind of human archetype at work here. The obsessive, trivia-infused, control freak who builds elaborate plans to make the world work – or explain how it works. A warning sign throughout the ages.

And of course, a useful insight on how some things never change, and maybe we need to be ready to warn against the same problem again and again – or just take a page from the Taoists and mock the hell out of it.

-Xenofact