Of conspiracy theorists and sheeple
18 July 2016(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 18 July 2016 issue)
Dear Kam,
Is it my imagination or does everybody believe in conspiracy theories these days?
Holden Caulfield
Many things have changed since I was young. When I was young, the air was clear, the weather wasn’t so damn hot, there really was less street crime and burglaries and, most importantly, there were no conspiracy theories. Well, there was one. A few crackpots believed that the moon landings were faked by Nasa and that everything was filmed in a studio. But that conspiracy theory was considered to be a joke, even by the people who were advocating it. Today, we live in a world with a web of interconnected and contradictory conspiracy theories. I feel like a minority because I don’t believe any of them and I think that people who do are deluding themselves.
I have a friend whose intelligence I respect, but he recently told me that he believes the New York 9/11 attack was a staged event. He believes that the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by pre-placed controlled explosions and not by the result of burning aircraft. I think that notion is ridiculous and we had a lengthy back-and-forth email exchange. Despite all my arguments, his belief remained unshakeable and his conclusion was that I am sheep-like in my adherence to a government’s official story (we simple-minded folk are called sheeple). I do not, he insists, have any scepticism, and to paraphrase The Who, I will be fooled again.
A few weeks later, he sent me a story about the allegation that the 9/11 attacks were sponsored by high-ranking Saudi officials. This confirmed, he believed, the conspiracy theory. He didn’t seem to notice the contradiction, that his latest conspiracy theory would have meant that the attacks with aircraft did actually happen and that there would not have been any pre-placed explosives in the towers. Somehow, it is possible for two entirely contradictory conspiracy theories to be simultaneously correct and for my friend to be always right. We’re being controlled my dark forces, my friend would say, and it doesn’t really matter how, so long as we know that they are doing so.
The world can be a confusing and scary place. It would be comforting if we could have some theories that not only make sense of the chaos and show there is some fiendish ongoing plan but which can also make us and our kind morally blameless. Fortunately, the internet can now supply us with an array of conspiracy theories to suit our individual need for a particular set of baddies, which is never us. Depending on who or what we think, we can now blame the CIA, the Rothschilds, the Illuminati or even aliens for all the things we either don’t or can’t be bothered to understand. There’s no need for understanding economics, the social effects of climate change or gender politics because it’s all about a secretive group of individuals conspiring and then executing a fiendishly clever plan to destroy our world. They are the ultimate Bond villains and we are internet surfing James Bonds because we have been clever enough to spot the truth.
The great thing about conspiracy theories is that they would all make terrifically exciting movies, which is one of the reasons why we find them to be such attractive explanations for a confusing world because they suggest that everything is created by the actions of individuals. If the moon landings were actually filmed in a studio then there would need to be a deadly conspiracy to maintain the secret. But what if a naively brave astronaut stumbled onto the conspiracy? He would have to be hunted down and silenced. Actually, that was a movie called Capricorn One and it was very good. The real story of the moon landings might make an interesting documentary but it has never been made into a movie because it’s quite boring. Scientists and engineers planned the mission, some people were sent to the moon and they came back safely. Boring. Of the only two major movies that were about the space programme, one (The Right Stuff) focused on the story of choosing the individual astronauts and the other (Apollo 13) was about the one time it almost went disastrously wrong. Director Alfred Hitchcock was the master of suspense and he said that two people sitting around a table and talking is boring, but if we know there is a ticking bomb under the table, then that’s interesting. It would be so much more interesting if the moon landings had all been a hoax.
When I was arguing with my friend about 9/11 conspiracy theories, he quoted Kurt Cobain who said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Obviously, Cobain was right and conspiracies do exist. But nowadays, we are overwhelmed by an overabundance of patently crazy theories and we seem to be able to believe all of them simultaneously. Reality has become both boring and frightening and we now seek comfort in conspiracy theories that help us to feel morally blameless and superior to the brainless sheeple. But, instead of giving us a sense of security, these conspiracy theories make us feel more paranoid because they reinforce our sense of helplessness against exotic forces more powerful than ourselves. My theory is that somebody wants us to not believe in facts but instead to feel constantly paranoid, scared and adrift. Jeng, jeng, jeng.
Reprinted with the kind permission of
