Do you believe in conspiracy theories?
If so, are you offended that I call them conspiracy theories? Or do you pity my naivety?
I had a call today from a friend who was worried about their house guest. The guest has gone full Truman Show. They believe the moon landings were faked. Space isn’t real, it’s a painting on the sky. Moreover the end of the world is coming soon, as foretold in biblical writings.
I didn’t get into the whole covid vaccine question, but I’m guessing they see the hand of Bill Gates in there somewhere. Or is that just my chip talking? Sorry.
For people with my background, it’s too easy to be dismissive or patronising when we hear people who buy into conspiracy theories, big time. ‘Poor misguided people’, we say, ‘led astray by bad folks on the Internet with nefarious agendas.’
But surely it’s much more interesting than that.
What could inspire people to believe in a narrative that is completely at odds with everything we have ever experienced?
Many of the popular theories share some basic characteristics.
1. Things are not what they seem. They believe there’s something going on behind the scenes that most people don’t know about. I get this – the world is way too complex for any individual to understand. It requires faith in others, who understand these things – scientists, doctors, politicians, businessmen etc. If faith in these people breaks down, we’re left groping for some facts we can believe and without that faith, anything could conceivably fill that void.
2. The world is, according to the theory, run by a shadowy elite. To an extent I actually believe this too, though I would addd there are many elites and some are not shadowy. When we feel powerless – and who doesn’t at least some of the time? – it’s tempting to see someone else as running the show. It also helps to be able to point the finger – they’re to blame when my life doesn’t go the way I wanted.
3. The conspiracy explains the oblique or complex parts of life. That’s a powerful motivation to buy into a theory. Much of life is a bit impenetrable and defies a simple explanation. We just have to believe. Hence many of our mental processes are concerned with making sense of the world around us despite the complexity. It echoes the way we learn as children and continue to process information as adults.
4. It’s ‘us and them’. Not only do ‘they’ either not get it or they pretend they don’t get it, but they will persecute us because we do. They are the enemy. We all need to belong.
5. It’s a joined up ‘theory of everything’. We can see that everything is joined up somehow. But how, exactly? Any theory that can answer that, is immediately attractive. It also works like multiple supporting pillars.
Of course everything I have just written about conspiracy theories, applies exactly to organised religion. Yes I know, you saw that coming a mile off. Congratulations.
Despite bearing no relation to anything they had ever experienced, and flying in the face of all real world evidence, generations of perfectly intelligent, well adjusted people followed the teachings of the church without, I am told, too much dissent. We clearly have a need which is satisfied by this sort of thing.
But there’s one extra crucial element to religion – meaning.
And this is where I think I get where the conspiracy theorists are coming from. Explaining everyday science is one thing but we also want to give it some kind of meaning. Science is all a bit unsatisfactory in many ways. There’s no really good explanation of ‘why’.
A god-like creator is one way of resolving that. Another is to attribute everything to a man-made conspiracy. It’s an alternative version of ‘intelligent design’.
In the eighteenth century, the philosopher David Hume tried to address the ‘skeptics’ who claimed “you can’t prove anything”.
He concluded that, even though we could not prove the basics of the world through reason, we were so conditioned to accepting science and nature that we cannot stop believing in it. Basically you can’t believe in nothing at all. It’s just not something humans can do. We need that meaning. So when we lose faith in the things that gave meaning, we have to find something new that works for us.
And point 4 above – the need to belong – is crucial here. It’s that mix of meaning and belonging that fuels the deep desire to believe. In …..something.
Your football team. Your family. Your political leader. Your god. Anything.
Even if it involves Prince Philip and Lizards.
The Aspidistra 