The mold cult

I.

Second grade. I’m making reindeer out of popsicle sticks. The kid across from me mentions Santa. He will regret it.

A few weeks beforehand, my stepdad and I were in a Disneyland parking lot waiting for the rest of the family. I had questions and he was trapped. “How fast does he fly? Does he stop time?” About 20 Geneva convention violations later the interrogation broke him. “What do you want me to say?” he asked. “He’s not real. Are you happy?” Reader, I was.

Over popsicle stick reindeer I tell the kid what I learned. My news is poorly received. Our teacher pulls me into the hallway. “You can’t say that. It’s fine if you don’t believe in Santa, but other kids do, and that’s okay.”

II.

You have a new roommate who worships mold. He cultivates it wherever he can. He hides fruit in his drawers. He sprinkles water in corners. His room turns into a petri dish. You develop a cough — a black mold infection.

You email the landlord only to find that he shares your roommate’s beliefs. You try to move out only to realize with horror that every other landlord and potential roommate you contact shares them too.

Some false beliefs are relatively harmless. Some are not, and will walk all over you if you let them.

But of course, beliefs don’t have feet. People have feet.

III.

An unfortunate fact of humanity is that sociopaths exist. A little more broadly, people exist who derive pleasure from harming the defenseless, whether because of deep trauma or the biological inability to feel empathy.

Belief systems with scriptures and “because-God-said-so” rules attract such people. No matter how many religious people you meet who are loving and community-minded and appropriately dismissive of the faith’s more vestigial laws, there remain those who prefer to use its dictates and hierarchies to carry out sadism on the helpless and marginalized. Religious leaders abuse children at rates far higher than any other group. Right-wing politicians persecute LGBTQ people by the millions.

Both hide behind a mask of faith that it’s considered rude to try to remove. It’s rude to tell people Santa isn’t real.

IV.

It may be tempting to say, okay, let’s tease these people apart. Let’s roll up our sleeves and root out the sociopaths so we can keep letting people believe what they want. With all due respect, that’s a crock of shit that we don’t have time for; false beliefs are killing people and ruining lives every day. “Community masking doesn’t help with COVID.” “Silicon Valley Bank failed because it’s too woke.” Call these out wherever you find them. Hate the false belief, not the believer.

Some beliefs can’t be proven false, like the belief that when you die, you meet people you love who died before you. I have no qualms with this. I have qualms with the stuff we can all see is false and would get you committed if not as many people believed it. “Mold cult” stuff.

I’ve been a chronic conflict-avoider my whole life; I understand the pain of confrontation. But to “believe and let believe” is to cosign a society full of false beliefs, and far worse, one where sociopaths have a giant walk-in closet of false beliefs with which to dress up their cruelty. It’s time to raid those closets. That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.