religion

Your Paranoia Is Your God

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Many a Conspiracy Theorist claims to be religious, but I think they’re not honest about who their real God is.

As my regular readers know I have a fascination with Conspiracy Theories. This is both because I’m interested in how people work, and because as we’ve seen they’re incredibly goddamn dangerous. Honestly the way we treat Conspiracy Theorists as a point of humor misses how some of them turn very deadly individually or in groups.

As I watch these potentially dangerous people, I’ve seen how their ideas can become all-consuming. I’ve noted elsewhere that Conspiracy Theory is a kind of creative skill, an unhealthy form of writing and imagination. I suppose it has to be that way so it can encompass everything you need to an eternal yes-anding to reality.

After all, your Theory has to explain everything. Plus you can’t let someone one-up on you, especially if you want to get internet clicks and sell supplements. A Conspiracy Theory is a comittment.

These Conspiracy Theories almost inevitably include religion because you have to. You have to cover it all, so deities, Satan, angels, etc. all have to become part of it. Most Conspiracy theorists remind me of the ever one-upping that dooms movies and TV shows to raise the stakes ridiculously to keep going before their inevitable collapse. The theory must be fed.

Watching this constant adaption, this sacrifice to the Theory, reminds me of what I said early about Monotheism being so unstable it has to evangelize and spread to avoid questions. Thus I can safely say that Conspiracy Theories are just a form of monotheism.

Think about it. Conspiracists are beholden to the Great Conspiracy. The Conspiracy defines them. The Conspiracy must be supported. For many The Conspiracy is a form of profit or career, the very essence of what they do. The Conspiracy Theory is the most important thing in their life – in short, their god.

And it has to be monotheism. The Conspiracy Theorist by definition worships an all-encompassing idea. Any different idea is incorporated or is declared falsehood and the enemy. To not do so is to risk breaking your god – you may dress it up in cosplay as some other god, but it’s yours and it’s just as broken as you are.

Even if the Conspiracy Theorist is a pure grifter, they still have to keep putting time in on the Theory as it’s always under challenge. It’s still their god even if they don’t believe it. Plus there’s always the risk they start believing or have to start believing.

Whatever deity they say they worship, The Conspiracy Theorist’s real god is The Theory.

This “monotheism model” is a tool I find useful to understand Conspiracy Theorists. They’re on a religious crusade no matter what. They have to be. They have to maintain this god, the god is all they have. No wonder they seem so anxious to kill people for their god.

It doesn’t make me feel any safer. If anything I feel kind of worse. But I feel I have a better grasp of what to worry about.

-Xenofact

Feed The Unstable God

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I’ve been thinking about religious evangelism lately due to, well, large chunks of human history and too many chunks of current history. Most of my thoughts are about evangelizing by believers in Anthropomorphic Monotheism, those who worship a god they insist is infinite and all knowing yet has the same traits and biases as humans. It seems a lot of people want us to follow their Big Daddy – or else.

The funny thing is for so many people proclaiming their undying faith – and being willing to spread it by the sword and the bullet – evangelical Anthropomorphic Monotheists seem peculiarly insecure about their deity. Considering a core part of their believe has a conflict between “infinite in all ways” and “just as petty as I am” it’s not surprising. You can feel that instability.

How do you resolve belief in a being of infinite power and potential with the idea they’re worried about, say, what bathroom they use or what day they worship at? How do you reconcile all the conflicts with experience, holy texts, other believers, and so on? A believer in an all-to-human infinite “god” has to spend a lot of time making excuses or a lot of time ignoring the conflicts – the world will mock them by existing.

This conflict is familiar to me – believing in a god both petty and transcendent is a challenge that is faced by enthusiasts for media, like fanfic writers. Every new show, every season, every episode the staff may dump a new load of continuity or retcontinuity on you. You have to constantly revise your ideas due to new input and instability – but whereas fanfic writers admit they have “a take,” believers in Anthropomorphic Monotheism have to act like everything is real.

And this I think is one reason for the rampant evangelism. The world is constantly leading you to question your beliefs as your beliefs are fundamentally unstable and unsustainable without effort. So what do you do? You convert the world, you make the world believe and act the way you think it should so you don’t face conflicts.

Anthropomorphic Monotheism is inherently unstable to a level that is painful in the mind of believers. To resolve that pain they have to change the world so they don’t have conflict, so everything lines up, so everything is it should be. At some levels this evangelism is a kind of Gray Goo, Von Neuman’s Catastro-deity. It just chews up the world to replicate itself.

And, yes, the reasons for religions evangelism are more than just resolving conflicts by eating the world, but I think the inherent instability and need to convert are worth examining. Maybe it explains people’s need for an Apocalypse – they need a fundamental point where unresolvable conflicts are resolved, and are fine to watch the world die to have it.

So next time you see believers in Anthropomorphic Monotheism enragedly trying to convert people, ask how much of that is them trying to resolve the inherit instability of their religion. And ask yourself how much of the world they’d burn to fuel it.

-Xenofact

Art And Spirituality

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Last column I wrote about how my experiments with art parodying spiritual bullshit and grifty scams had been intriguing.  I understood how art was part of human spirituality,  how it our love of beauty and form and such was a way to powerfully communicate deep experiences.  This made me realize it was time to explore something I’ve been trying to put into words about art and spirituality – my parodic work helped me talk serious stuff, go figure.

Simply put, I think art is inseparable from spirituality as art is the bridge that connects us to the Universe, the Tao, The Big Picture, because it connects to our thoughts and emotions.

The universe is vast and complex, our world is complex, our lives complex – even one person is complex. We’re here trying to understand reality, move within it, live within it – but it’s so big. This is why I like the term “The Tao,” which is essentially “the source of all this and no we can’t really speak of it.”

I’m honest on my biases. But let me go on.

Now we humans, we may be small, but we are aware of how huge everything is. We model the universe, we understand it, we analyze it. To work with it, with each other, to survive, grow, explore, or even just goof off, we have to find ways to handle this great Giant Allness. Philosophy and religion and spirituality are ways to organize and naviate this world and live inside it. Obviously some philosophies and religions don’t work out that well, but you get the idea – a bad plan is still a plan.

How do you connect us to our philosophies and meditations and spells and the greater universe? Well, humans have art. Art is where thought and emotion and sensation all come together, where a single picture or image can lead us to the bigness out there. Art is connection

Art is the bridge between us and The Big Picture, the way we line everything up to really think and feel and experience the greater world. From lovely philosophical writings to complex spiritual charts, awe-inspiring gods and gorgeous meditation hangings, those symmetries and poetries help us connect.  Those synergies of emotion and word and sensation come together and we get something larger than us in a way we can handle.

Art both focuses us and helps us get bigger.

In fact, isn’t most of religion and spirituality really art in the end? Temples and diagrams, pithy advice books and statues of the gods? It’s trying to synthesize infinity and vastness in some way you can work with it, get it, think it, and feel it.

The vast powers of the world are easily understood and appreciated and interacted with in the form of a god. You want to understand the states of existence, but the diagram of the Six Realms makes it easier (and hey, six is a manageable number). We drape art over the universe to make it both comprehensible – and to take us soaring into realms greater than ourselves.

Art, that love of form and color and combination, is the perfect tool to connect us to the universe in all its vast living potential.

I think I managed to sum up my feelings. I’m sure I’ll have more to say, but at least I said it – dare I say, made some art of it.

-Xenofact