Look For The Avatars

We’ve often heard the phrase “look for the helpers” from Fred Rogers. I’ve seen this simple bit of advice deconstructed, believe it or not, but instead of adding one, I’d like to add a recent, similar lesson. Look for the Avatars.

Recently I’d been contemplating the divine, as I’m prone to do. As stated previously, I believe there is something to the idea of gods, that there are great powers out there. We “connect” with these great powers and patterns with creative ideas – stories, rituals, and so forth. Art is kind of the bridge (which I need to write about more).

However, there are times my divine contemplations do feel rarefied. There’s those powerful experiences of the divine, those presences that make you realize something is there. At times I wish I had more of them, that personal experience, though I am rather abstract by nature.

A few days later, I was at an amazing exhibit about the amazing Amos Kennedy Junior, an engraver and artist. In his decades of work he’s spoken to issues of racsim, abuse, bigotry, and more with powerful and impactful text and designs. Maps with block text about the oppression of people. Pithy statements on simple posters. He’s a master of many things, but all of them get into your head.

There was something about his work that was deep and powerful. It wasn’t just art, or protest, or history. It was divine in its truth.

On my way back from the gallery, these words came to my lips: This man is an avatar of Thoth.

Thoth, god of writing and magic, of science and art. . The husband or father of Seshat, lady of libraries and archives (and thus I consider her goddess of bookstores). Thoth is the power of words, and Kennedy’s words and text had power.

That’s when I realized that there, in the museum, I had a religious experience. I got to experience the power of writing and words, artistically arranged, a kind of magic, spun by a master of writing and creativity. He embodied Thoth, the principles of Thoth, he had power.

I had a religious experience there, contemplating this engraver. Something powerful. Something unexpected. Something which taught me a valuable lesson.

Look for the Avatars.

If you want to see the divine in the world, look for embodiments of it. They’re all around you. They’re in art studios and making your coffee, composing music and making videos about food. They’re everywhere. There are people who embody the very thing you’re seeking if you give yourself space to see it.

We can argue what gods “really” are, we can argue minutae and we can try to grasp the ungraspable that-which-is. But the power of those things behind the world, the great principles, are there right now. Look for them in your fellow people.

-Xenofact

The Capitalist Messiah Machine

I’ve heard many people say “Capitalism ends in fascism,” but let me put in my thought – Capitalism seems to create messiahs.  Inevitably.

Lately in 2025 it seems Capitalism is filled with messiahs.  It used to be you’d get a few here and there, but now we’re awash in them and their annoying products, videos, and podcasts.  People who will save us from ourselves, who will usher in the singularity, or take us intergalactic or whatever.  It seems late-stage Capitalism produces an embarrassment of messiahs, and all of them are embarrassing.

This got me thinking.  Because Capitalism in popular imagination is often portrayed as hard-edged, about bargains, and money, and economic growth and so on.  When it’s not, it usually involves drugs (usually cocaine) and sex (when on cocaine), and excess (thanks 80’s movies).  If there was philosophy it was pseudo-Nietzsche/Ayan Rand stuff at best.  If people were Capitalists out to reshape the world they were usually villains fighting James Bond or Superman.

I think these pop culture ideas may have shielded us from the messiah Machine that is Capitalism.

Capitalism allows people to accumulate power in the form of wealth, influence, and public regard.  Capitalism has no restraints, so some people are going to get a lot of wealth and power, which lets them do whatever they want.  Most of them use that to get more wealth and power, since they’re competing with each other and you don’t want anyone to get the drop on you.

Capitalists also don’t face a lot of repercussions as they have money, power, and the backing of our culture.  When’s the last time you’ve seen someone whos rich face repercussions for their actions, even when you hear of horrific accusations of scamming, child abuse, and worse?  Exactly.  It’s easy to get used to that, and start thinking of yourself as invulnerable – and even get used to it.

Lots of power.  No repercussions.  It becomes easy to think you’re special, maybe even a messiah.

But you’re also totally abstract from human experience as one of our hyper-capitalists.  You live in a soft world where cause and effect isn’t what it is for everyone else.  Your world is a world of numbers and marketing, and nothing else. You’re just a suit of flesh around a bank account and a stock portfolio.  How easy is it to spin some messiah story to give your life meaning?

It’s probably much easier when your life is devoid of cause and effect, of meaning, so you come up with a story to make yourself special and not just a money meat suit.

Some Capitalists may not fall into such traps, but messianism is also a useful shield.  People catch on that some idiot who got a huge inheritance is still just an idiot, but an idiot deciding how large chunks of the world run.  Claiming messianism is a great way to protect yourself from people who are starting to realize you didn’t earn anything and figure you shouldn’t have it.

You might even believe you’re a messiah after awhile.  And in the isolation.  And probably the drugs.


In retrospect, Capitalism seems to be a kind of messiah machine.  Sure it may have taken awhile to get to our current state of multiple messianic money morons, but boy have we done it in spades the last ten to twenty years.  We’ve also got a lot of would-be Capitalist Messiahs with their video channels and other grifts.

It’s probably both the concentration of money and power and the media.  We’ve got powerful people with influence over the media, a media filled with bootlickers, and the chance of parasocial relationships.  That’s been a powerful force letting people find someone to worship, inviting both the manipulative and the deluded to indulge.

Capitalism leads to fascism, sure.  But it also leads to messiahs and those are a pretty integral ingredient to fascism.

-Xenofact

The Tao Isn’t The Market

In my Taoist readings, “the Tao” is always a subject of discussion. This is ironic because as the beloved Tao Te Ching notes, when you speak of the Tao you’re not speaking of the real Tao. A great deal of Taoist writing is talking about how ineffable the Tao is then writing a huge amount about it. There’s a reason I compare writers like Chuang-Tzu to people like Dave Barry – you need that mix of humor and sarcasm to handle such irony.

Of course that’s kind of the point. You have a word for the ineffable (Tao) that’s behind all things, and that word represents everything and how you can’t really define it. The Tao is everywhere, it’s why everything is, it’s the smallest and the largest, the near and the far. Taoism takes a word that lets you refer to the great connected isness of absolutely everything that words can’t otherwise encompass.

It’s kind of a linguistic hack.

That, I find, is also the power of good Taoist writing. Using a single word and poetic writing, it reminds you that the universe is great and connected. Leading you around by words and sentences, you start intuitively getting to understanding the power behind everything. In turn, that lets you live in the world, living in harmony with things, knowing it’s all vast and everywhere and connected – Tao.

If you get it you get it. If you don’t, you don’t. If you want to fake it, you probably can for awhile. But a lot of Taoism is words leading you to the wordless, that there’s a force behind everything.

What’s funny is I realized lately that the Tao reminds me of how Capitalists think of the Almighty Market.

What is is. The Market speaks. The great and powerful force that reconciles everything is perfect and everywhere and if you don’t get rich then The Market has decided. The market is unquestionable and good and perfect and the foundation of all things. The market is like the Tao in that it’s ineffable, AND like a personal god in that it makes decisions about things, granting everything a moral quality. The Market cannot be questioned, it’s that awesome! Yet also it makes decisions.

What’s funny is the market being a human construct, being about profit and gain and exploitation, is something Taoists warned about for aeons. As a construct that warps human feelings, it’s to be regarded with suspicion. As something about gain, it risks the traps of greed and acquisitiveness, which corrupt society. As something surrounded by flummery and endless long-winded justifications, it’s as suspicious as pretentious intellectuals and politicians and would-be sages.

The way people treat The Market as some divine force darkly echoes the words of the Taoists with a touch of theology, and realizing that I understand Market Fanatics passion much better. It’s beyond greed, into religion and even a kind of perverse mysticism.

And thanks to the Taoists, who would have laughed at the Market Fanatics and their pretentious, helped me understand that better. And laugh, of course.

I appreciate the irony. Which Chuang-Tzu and Dave Barry would probably both appreciate.

Xenofact