Conspiracy Theory Creation On The Cheap And Easy

It is a general human trait to want to impose an order upon the world around us, and by and large this is a good thing. All of science springs from this impulse, what the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce called our "Fixation of Belief." However, we do not always follow the road of critical inquiry all the way to the gleaming metropolis called "Scienceville." Many are content to call an end to their journey in little bumwad hamlets or festering backwaters that reality has long ago forsaken. The motivation behind such actions are varied, but it is safe to say many result from psychological needs divorced completely from the real world, like a person who chooses to believe that their parents really did send the elderly family dog to live on a farm in the country. The psychological need to believe the beloved pet wasn't put down is greater for such a person than the need to know how the world actually is.

For others the psychological needs are a little more nuanced and can manifest themselves in less purely personal matters, such as in the arena of national politics. Some people feel the need to create of the political scene a gnostic world of darkness and light, where good battles evil and where the stakes are the very soul of the nation. The actual chaos of the day wherein every political side wins, loses, miscalculates, cajoles, lies, persuades and is persuaded, is glossed over in favor of a fixed political drama where all roles and outcomes are pre-ordained.

People prone to see the world in such a way are also susceptible to the siren song of the conspiracy theory. The large singular events, like 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination, that interrupt the normal flow of national life must, so these folks believe, be scripted as well in a like manner. No matter what happens it must be part of the larger gnostic storyline. So, every person with an anti-government axe to grind (or a rabid anti-Republican bias) is more prone to accept some wild 9/11 conspiracy. So, every raving anti-Semite sees Israel's hand in everything bad that happens in the Middle East. But, when one has chosen to live in the provincial backwaters of thought you can expect little else. The vistas open to such people are limited, just like the way the "skyline" of a small town is limited and never changes much. Where folks with critical faculties see limitations they see "patterns" which they value above any facts you might care to point out to them.

Indeed, it is distressingly easy to come up with your own conspiracy theory. All you have to do is turn your mind off for a few moments. Take this scenario:

There is something funny about the 35W bridge collapse. Why did it happen right at this time? Right at this place? After all the campaign for President is going fast and furious. Could it really be only a coincidence? I think not.

Fact: The Republicans will be holding their nominating convention in the Twin Cities.

Fact: Nefarious underground anti-war, Democratic and anarchist groups have vowed to disrupt the Republicans, including "blockading freeways and causing other trouble." What could cause more trouble than destroying a freeway bridge?

Maybe, just maybe the bridge collapse was staged to look like an accident so that liberals and other Democratic operatives could hammer the Republicans for their tax cutting ways. Almost immediately after the accident the usual media stooges and their liberal blogger brethren blamed Republicans for the collapse! How convenient!!!

Isn't it suspicious that a bridge that had just been checked would simply fall down? And it happened not in Toledo, or Tampa, or Tacoma, but Minneapolis/St. Paul!!?! Coincidence????? I think not. Beware folks, this is just the beginning!

Now, let me make this clear, the above is moronic and insane. I actually hesitated in writing it for fear of mimicking the plot of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum where a wild invented conspiracy gets adopted as the real thing. However, I wanted to show how little needs to go into things like this. A couple of links, a bit of the unknown or unknowable, a touch of paranoia, and a dash of fear mongering is all you need to be a first class "truther."

There will always be some of this in our society, and in every other society as well. Turkey, for example, has it's own variety of gnostic storytelling with the U.S. often playing the "force of darkness" role. A healthy society, however, will hammer such views with reality. We may not be able to eradicate these ideas, but we can at least recognize them and force them into the margins where they belong. An unhealthy society will acquiesce, as Hitlerian Germany and Tsarist Russia did to anti-Semitic propagandistic fables, to the ultimate cost of the entire society.

The question becomes: How healthy is our society?

I'm not sure.

Cross posted at MvdG.