Conspiracy Theories
or
How I Learned to Accept My Lizard Alien Overlords
Most of us have read the news about killer vaccines or heard the whispers concerning the poisoning of the atmosphere through jet engine fuel (ChemTrails). You’re probably also aware of the claim that Hilary Clinton ran a child pornography ring now referred to as PizzaGate or JFK Jr. was returning from the dead to run as Trump’s VP or that a National Inquirer headline states, “Mother of Two Impregnated During Alien Abduction”. The list of inane myths is long and continues to expand daily.
As rational people we tend to shake our collective heads in wonder as to how anyone can possibly buy into this complete and utter nonsense, but they do. Millions upon millions of people who we might otherwise believe are rational human beings will ply us with the “facts” about any number of theories if they have the opportunity. In situations when I’m cornered by one of them, all I can do is nod and hope that the incredulous look of horror in my eyes is not overly evident.
When we view these “theories” from the sideline, we might find them extremely humorous, as if we are watching a skit on Saturday Night Live or perhaps listening to Jon Stewart. The absurdity of these claims can easily mask their destructive quality because the people who believe these stories (calling them theories gives them more credence than they deserve) have wholeheartedly incorporated them into their world view.
The lists of the most prevalent conspiracies can vary wildly depending on the appetite of those who believe them and the political and cultural climate at the time. Here is a link to the top ten complied by the Southern Poverty Law Center as of last year (click here). One of my all-time favorites in terms of lunacy is the one I alluded to in the title: Aliens that look like lizards have settled on earth and disguised themselves as humans, but every now and then they slip up and show their scales. If you do a Google search you can find websites that have “proof positive” regarding this concept.
The main current driver of all of this misinformation is the internet. These ideas can spread like a digital wildfire, exacerbated by both fear of the unknown and the desire to have secret knowledge that only a few others know about. This insider response allows those who view themselves as disenfranchised to not only feel important but to find like-minded others who share their beliefs. Isolation is a main component of our current culture and the “cyber-tribes” that gather around these ideas, regardless of how crazy they seem, give a person a sense of belonging.
An article in the American Psychological Association magazine (click here) discusses in detail the roots of these beliefs, though there is still much research needed to truly understand this phenomenon, since this is still a somewhat fledgling issue. Conspiracy concepts have been around for thousands of years (The Inquisition, Salem Witch Trials, the Committee on Un-American Activities, and Jonestown to name a few), but the increase in this kind of thinking has grown exponentially in recent years, prompting more intense scrutiny and research.
So what do we do? Identifying any problem is only the beginning in dealing with dystopian nightmares such as what is being discussed here. Finding salient and workable solutions that can have a lasting impact is the really difficult part. Because of the damage being done by the spreading of these lies, myriad articles have been written on this subject. I’m including a link to one such article in Scientific American titled, How Can You Fight Conspiracy Theories? (click here)
Ultimately the conspiracist’s greatest weapon is the truth. Every so often a relatively far-fetched idea that may have started as an alternative press article, prior to being picked up by alarmists, turns out to be true. For instance the paranoia surrounding the supposed National Security Agency’s quest to break into emails and voice recordings has proven to be the case. Or the truth about the Tuskegee experiments carried out on African American men in the 1940s only surfaced relatively recently after being called fictional for decades.
These are the kinds of things that conspiracists point to as proof that they are within reason when it comes to living in CrazyTown. What all of this means is that we, as rational individuals, must question everything that smacks of sensationalism. Every time we read an article that promotes something that doesn’t seem quite right, we should first go to Snopes.com, but also Wikipedia and as many other reliable sources as we can think before passing this information along.
I’m not above being sucked in. A few months ago I heard someone speaking about seed-based cooking oils like sunflower and canola. The upshot of the conversation was that these were very bad for you, so without doing any research I purchased Avocado Oil on my next trip to Costco. Silly me. The following week I read an article in the NY Times (link) delving into this nonsense and, as it turns out, it is nonsense. All of those other oils are just fine and lots of research has been done to back this up.
I wanted to believe, so more fool I.
Tobin another stimulating arrangement of thoughts to address our American social condition. I do not think human beings are rational. I think what qualifies as rational depends upon environmental conditions and upon social conditioning. Fact and theory are co-dependent, neither is possible without the other. A conspiracy theorist, the flavor of conspiracy does not matter, lives within a world that features facts of different shape and texture, by comparison to the world which you and I inhabit.
I am somewhat confused by your contention that the greatest weapon of the conspiracist is the truth. All lies depend on a modicum of truth do they not? A fragment of truth dislocated from context, in the abstract, is fodder for distortion, morphing to stoke the anxiety of the recipient. Should we even call “this” truth, dislocated from a native context? As I think about that, I am impressed that nearly all advertising depends upon this move in order to persuade.
If, through advertising we are subject to a drumbeat of lies, is it any wonder that so many of us are presently “wigged out” on conspiracy theories?
Yes, perhaps Trump is an apt icon of our times!
From the cheap seats I don’t see any glimmer of basis for many of these so called theories. I see them as products of an over active and fairly paranoid imagination. Chemtrails, for example, are completely fictional. From any perspective it would take over 450,000 airline employees to be “in on” the plan to poison the planet (and themselves by the way). And yet this is one of the top fears by conspiracists. Also, Lizard People from Outer Space? How is there any factual seed in this belief?
I understand that there are some of these theories that hatch from a small notion that might have a fact associated with the concept, but I feel these are the exceptions.
Just my two cents.
I think one’s own reality it as real as anyone else’s. Ask a schizophrenic what is real and they will tell you what they see and hear and it could be anything from an elephant on stilts to a kangaroo under the ocean. It’s extremely real to them. The thing I always get back to is natural selection. Most of the folks from your ‘crazytown’ would have been stoned to death or left behind in the woods to be eaten by wolves because of their thoughts. Yet because of we have built walls, have welfare, have a justice system that supposedly is to be fair for all, we have nurtured and sheltered them and allowed them to breed and multiply. They are here and there’s no getting rid of them. We must learn to accept them among us and try and be at peace with that as much as we can.
I absolutely agree that we have become, for the most part, a much more accepting and tolerant culture, allowing those whose mind take them on a divergent journey to find a home with out a threat to their well-being. But it is not the schizophrenics or the wholly delusional that I’m talking about. It’s your every day person on the street that appears to function relatively well. They hold a job, they drive, they go to the grocery store and when they get home, they log onto their computer and discuss various lunacies with others of a like mind. If these folks just wanted to convene and feel like they’ve found their tribe, I wouldn’t mind (as much). But when someone take a rifle into a pizza parlor and begins shooting at folks because he is “absolutely certain” there’s a basement filled with slave children doing the bidding of Hilary Clinton, then that is going WAY TOO FAR. The real problem is that so many of these people find that echo chamber on the internet, where they are constantly encouraged to crawl further and further done a dystopian rabbit hole with a potential end result of harm either to others or to themselves. This is not acceptable and should not be tolerated. But there is not much being done about it because as conspiracy followers they are much more susceptible to joining something like The Cult of Trump. So people like him encourage this type of behavior. Just a thought.