How fiction becomes atrocity
“All evil begins as a story someone needed to believe.”
I. The Comfort of the Loop
Belief is not just a statement about the world. It is a defense against its chaos. It wraps uncertainty in explanation. It offers roles, rules, enemies, and purpose.
The moment you believe something deeply, your mind stops asking. You no longer look for edges. You inhabit a loop: belief creates perception, which reinforces belief.
This is not always bad. It can stabilize a life. It can create beauty, identity, community. But it also makes atrocities possible.
Because once a belief is sealed - fully sealed - it overrides empathy. It reclassifies the other. It licenses cruelty in the name of righteousness.
Belief is not evil. But it is combustible.
II. Belief as Operating System
Most people think they have beliefs. In truth, their beliefs have them.
From childhood onward, you are installed with software: religious dogma, national identity, historical myths, scientific assumptions. They run quietly in the background, shaping how you see others, how you see yourself.
These are not facts. They are code - agreed-upon fictions that interpret the raw data of the world.
Sometimes the code protects you. Sometimes it turns you into a weapon.
Every flag is a story with a body count.
III. Fiction with Consequences
The most dangerous beliefs are not the wild ones. They are the ordinary ones - the ones everyone shares, the ones that feel like common sense.
The idea that some lives are worth more than others. The idea that violence can be redemptive. The idea that power must always protect itself.
These are stories. But they are enacted as law, tradition, policy. They are repeated so often that they stop sounding like stories at all.
And so fiction becomes infrastructure. Myth becomes murder.
It does not matter whether a belief is true. It matters what it does.
IV. The Atrocity Pipeline
There is a pattern:
- A fear is named.
- A story is told to explain it.
- A group is blamed.
- A system is built to contain or punish them.
- Violence becomes not only permitted - but required.
Every genocide begins with language. Every empire begins with a narrative. Every authoritarian regime begins by editing the story.
No one thinks they’re the villain. That’s the function of belief: to cast yourself as hero - even in horror.
V. Rewriting the Code
You cannot opt out of belief entirely. But you can hold beliefs lightly. You can learn to ask: Who benefits if I believe this? What would change if I didn’t?
Agency is not about having no stories. It is about knowing you are in one - and choosing to revise.
If The State Hates Vision Quests was about seeing through the veil, this chapter is about seeing what’s written on it.
You do not need to burn it all down. You just need to read it carefully.
And then, if necessary, pick up the pen.