No One Is Running Society
Conspiracy thinking is extremely popular today.*
(*Note: The word “conspiracy” refers to a thing that happens when a group of people conspire together. Please do not confuse this with a conspiracy THEORY, which is a theory (usually false) about a conspiracy. Do not talk about people “spreading conspiracies” or “conspiracies” being popular.)
1. Examples
I recently saw a video of the surface of Mars. The top comments were from people saying that the video was obviously fake, and “they” are just trying to “distract” us with stories about Mars so that they can take away our freedoms here on Earth.
The “distraction” theory is a popular one, presumably because it works for anything — any news story that attracts attention could be called a “distraction”. This is really lazy conspiracizing.
While Joe Biden was still running for President, people were saying that he was a puppet, controlled by some other forces. A popular theory on the right is that this was “Obama’s third term”.
I mentioned to a friend some of the examples of Trump saying extremely ignorant things. She said this just confirms that the politicians aren’t really the ones in charge; there must be someone else behind the scenes.
The right thinks that illegal immigration is part of the Democrats’ plan to “replace” American voters with more reliable Democratic voters.
And the left’s support for abortion and transgenderism is part of a elite plot to keep people from having families so they’ll be good workers. (?)
And wokism is part of a plan to “distract” us from the more important issues so the elites can seize power.
Of course, every war must be planned by the military contractors to make money.
All of this is a kind of cognitive disorder, the brain going haywire and losing touch with reality. Some of these conspiracy theories are crazier than others, but there’s no clear line between the crazy and the non-crazy ones — they just gradually shade from the mildly implausible to the ludicrous.
But first, what is wrong with this sort of thinking? Is there in fact anything wrong with it?
2. Specialized Ignorance
Some conspiracy theories betray extreme field-specific ignorance, like the theory that President Obama was running child slave colonies on Mars. This shows complete ignorance about things like the state of space flight technology, what Mars is like and where it is, and, let’s just say, business. It’s common for conspiracists to lack basic knowledge of fields related to their conspiracy theories. But let’s look for something more universal, because not all conspiracy theories implicate any specialized knowledge.
3. Ignorance of Humans
Overestimating Evil
Most conspiracy theories evince unrealism about ordinary human psychology. Every time some major terrorist attack occurs, there are going to be some people claiming that the attack was planned by the victim, or the victim’s government. E.g., 9/11 was planned by George W. Bush, or the Oct. 7 attacks were planned by Israel.
Of course, there are people with the psychological traits to plan and carry out such attacks. We know that because the attacks happened. However, the conspiracy theorists don’t seem to realize . . .