HOW NOT TO LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT: Lesson 3: “Conspiracy Theories”

The world is the living example of Chaos Theory and will never make sense no matter how hard we try.

It wasn't *my* suggestion, 10000li, I was referring to comments #9 & #10 by Flabberghasted and R3.

And I know we've gone round this mulberry bush before, but I do need to point out that just because *your* dog doesn't bark, doesn't mean that no dog barks. Over the course of human history, far more people have expressed religious or mythmaking inclinations than those who felt "Nope--this is all that is."

I guess you could say that the majority of people feel better if they believe someone or something is "in control," and that our lives aren't just a random series of accidents. So they cling to religion, or superstition, or conspiracy theories in order to make their concept of the world easier to digest. They make up fairy tales and folk stories to explain stuff they don't quite understand. They put their trust in horoscopes and in fortune cookies and "qi" in order to make their lives run more smoothly and bring them more luck.

I appreciate the fact that you, personally, don't believe in any oif that stuff. But that's not to say that humanity doesn't, either, or that humans in general don't feel a need for some form of superstition to help give them an edge in a world that they barely understand.

I read a couple of stories in "Analog" magazine in the quite a few years ago that relied on a similar plot device: We need the nutters to remind us of the limits beyond which we should not go.

In one story, folks were in a space station and a guy showed up who committed just about every faux pas imaginable: Didn't wash right, ate other people's food, made inappropriate comments about other people, etc. When the guy used his body to block a hull breach, he told the story's narrator to check out a certain psychology paper. The narrator read the paper and learned something very important:

Humans, and other animals, base our idea of "normal" on what everyone else is doing. The consequence for small, isolated groups is that the behaviors can drift a long way from normal in a short time, especially in those groups with charismatic leaders (Jim Jones, Fred Phelps, etc.) This is because everyone is using the behaviors of others as guideposts, and in the case of a strong leader, the members of the group are using him our her as the main indicator of what is acceptable and what is not.

In the story I talked about above, the protagonist was actually a psychologist, sent to the station to remind people what kinds of behavior were unacceptable, to help prevent them from drifting too far from the mainstream.

At the time I was reading that story and the others like it, I was stationed at an Air Force base in Germany. What I noticed was that the people I worked with had very strange ideas about who they were and what their role was in the world, and how they should interact with the locals. Very few people (less than 5%) did anything "on thee economy" as we called it. Most people preferred to live on base, shop on base and party on base. If they could not find what they were looking for on their own base, they would drive to another base to get it, no matter that there were fine shops with the very thing in the German town right next door.

So the Americans I met overseas tended to self-isolate. On top of that, people who are recruited into the Air Force tend to be from the better-qualified stratum of general military candidates (the Air Force only accepts people with 80% or above on their ASVAB scores, at least when I was in). That means mos tof them thought they normal. Over time, what was acceptable behavior on the not-so-big base where I was stationed had moved quite a ways from what people in mainstream American society would be OK with. Adultery was pretty rife - we had a group of women we referred to as "TDY widows" who'd show up at the club the first evening their husbands went off on temporary duty assignments. Treating Germans as lesser beings was also pretty common (Germans as lesser beings? Really?) There were other things that made me realize that the people on base were kinda crazy, but they all thought they were normal. When I read the stories like the one I talked about above, it opened my eyes and solidified in me the desire to move off base as quickly as possible. For the remainder of my time in Germany, I was only on base when I had to be. The rest of my time I spent with Germans and other Americans who chose to live off base.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that we need the nutters to remind us what deviant behavior looks like. If we didn't have them to show us what is "wrong," then pretty soon, we'd start believing that *everything* we were doing was right. And, I hate to say it but it's true, we need to treat deviant behaviors with some scorn and derision so that anyone who is on the fence about whether something they are planning to do is right or wrong realizes they will be punished for drifting too far from the herd.

Nutters help keep society stable. They show us what not to be like because of how they are treated. This prevents too much social volatility. The downside is that it takes a very long time to move from a society where Oscar Wilde is sent to prison for two years of hard labor for having boyfriends to one in which same-gender adults can finally marry each other legally (for example).

>>If there are any recruiters for *valid* super-secret world-domination conspiracies out there reading this, I'd be happy to send in my CV ;-)<<

Just as an update, no recruiters have yet contacted me, so my life hasn't yet gone on a whirlwind of intrigue, espionage, and conspiracy-funded globetrotting.

Maybe now that this thread is bumped up, though, it'll catch their attention :-D

[[I do get very regular updates from one looney semi-relative, however, about the banking crisis in the EU, mixed in with Venus alignments and reptilian shapeshifters, and how we're all doomed unless we educate ourselves and refuse to be exterminated. Those aren't even remotely interesting.]]

doh

I hope they decide to do a Defying Gravity Grand Tour mission. I would sign up in a heartbeat.

How old are you? You may be too old already for when they gain the capability to do such a mission.

"As was once stated in Star Trek: The Next Generation, of all places, “Conspiracies are almost never suspected if they’re real, and almost never real if they’re suspected.” That’s true.

That doesn’t mean conspiracies don’t exist, but most non-hallucinatory conspiracies are fairly short-term, goal-oriented, and pretty obvious. The easiest answer is most likely the correct one."

Very true. A few months ago I had the odd experience of having to do some work on a project that involved one individual who had lost it on conspiracies. He was full of them. He even regaled me repeatedly about how the key to a Republican victory in 2012 was for every candidate to focus like a laser on Obama's birth certificiate. It was irritating but kind of interesting to observe the hard core conspiracy freak in the wild. He was more or less able to function in the world, did one thing very well, but came across as stark raving mad at times.

"Also it is scary to some people to think that history just happens with little rime or reason. It scary to think that leaders of nations are just as clueless as the next guy, that wars, starvation and economic collapse happen because governments and leaders don’t have a clue to want they are doing. It is comforting to think that there is a plan for this entire mess even if the people doing the planning are evil and against you."

This. Some are just too afraid to face the intrinsic random quality of life. Some just like to feel special. They may not have much going on in their life, but your better than all the drones who don't see "the truth." And, of course, some are just genuinely mentally ill.

Doug Stanhope has it right:

"Nothing of any significance will ever happen to you in your entire, boring life."

... believing in this stuff is "far more palatable".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Oww4Ap3YZA

(In case there are sensitive Scots Guardsmen present, Doug swears a bit).

He is totally, absolutely right.

From the ’85 to ’90 I worked for an armored car company in Las Vegas. It was after my divorce so I spent a lot of time with the guys I worked with going to gun shops and getting into shooting competitions put on in said shops. I meet guys that wrote for Solider of Fortune magazine and many people in different gun clubs in southern Nevada. I can tell you there are more people that believe in Conspiracy theories than you might think.

I even had info that was passed to us by the FBI about an area militia group planning to hit our out of town truck. Conspiracy theories can and are dangerous and one of the problems is both major political parties feed into peoples paranoid fantasies if they think it will get them some votes. From the CIA sold crack in LA to Obama was not born in the country both parties say these ideas are nuts by day and fund groups passing this crap at night.

It does not help that the media will at times interview people with crazy ideas like they have something real to say. Or have shows on the history channel about an interesting Conspiracy theory. Now the history channel is cashing in on the doomsday craze it seems every weekend there is a show about 2012 or the anti Christ. And in these shows they repeat every Conspiracy theory on the internet like it could be real.

When I used to live in Florida I worked as a coordinator for the local community access cable station. My job was mainly to teach non-professionals the basics of live-to-tape television production and then help them make their own non-commercial tv shows which would then be shown on the designated community access cable channel.

It was probably my favorite job of all time. In a day of work I would be involved in the morning with the local white supremist group, in the afternoon with the local branch of Jewish Anti-Defamation League, and in the evening with the local group of Black Muslim activists (which is different than the traditional Muslim activist groups...). And everyone would volunteer to help on each others' shows.

And the place was rife with Conspiracy Theorists.

And I loved every minute of it (though I am sure there were some half-minute increments in there that I wasn't too fond of). And part of the fun of the job was spending time with hugely diverse groups of people (both super liberal and super conservative) and discussing conspiracy theories as a fun kind of hobby. But at a certain point all I was doing was getting a front row seat view into the sadness of these peoples' lives and a taste of the fantasy world in which they lived. And I felt bad about it.

That is why I couldn't get more than three chapters through The DaVinci Code, because I heard all of that stuff in Florida in the late 80s and early 90s from people that, though I was very fond of them, all in one way or another had mental issues. And I was gob-smacked by the amount of people that found the whole book premise even vaguely believable (or readable or well written).

Our government can't even keep secret the most mundane of facts shared between two people, how are they going to keep secret anything of import or incriminating once a third person becomes invovled.

Conspiracy theory = cheap ideas for fiction books written by opportunistic bad writers.

The problem with the truth is it’s not fun and it also does not give you an excuse. Most people that believe in Conspiracy Theories start with the premise of my life sucks because the evil (insert hated group here) is stopping me. People would rather believe in Conspiracy Theories than look at their own short comings.

Also it is scary to some people to think that history just happens with little rime or reason. It scary to think that leaders of nations are just as clueless as the next guy, that wars, starvation and economic collapse happen because governments and leaders don’t have a clue to want they are doing. It is comforting to think that there is a plan for this entire mess even if the people doing the planning are evil and against you.

Look at what is happening now the government is just reacting to events you can tell that they have no plan. There is no end game to the bank bailout or the war or to anything that is happening that is why people are getting pissed. It is a harsh thing to discover that the President and congress are just as clueless as your boss at work. But with a Conspiracy Theory it can make a kind of sense.

One of the reasons for the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories are it’s hard for people to except that the people that did the attacks are barking at the moon nuts. Just look at it here we have a group of people that somehow think that attacking a country that has the most powerful military in human history was a good idea and thought that we would just roll over and give up. It boggles the mind to think that people that crazy could walk around and no one noticed. It is easier for some to think there had to be some sort of conspiracy by the government than to think a bunch of nutjobs half a world away would or could do such a thing. Our intelligence agencies would have to be incompetent for it to happen and people just can’t except that they were incompetent.