Reality is Just Kidding

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Mark Twain

By Carl-John X Veraja

Conspiracy theories and religions are both interesting perhaps more for what they reveal about the believers than about the beliefs.  So, why do people become subject to beliefs that don’t necessarily jive with reality?

Well, maybe we should first define reality for the purpose of this article. I am going to go on the assumption that there’s a real world outside of my senses, my mind and self.  This seems reasonable to me because the explanation that everything is generated by the self seems overly elaborate given the fact that laws govern the perceived universe rather consistently despite my desires.  Logically, you can insist that we can never fully prove that we aren’t just butterflies dreaming that we’re human beings, but this not only opens the door to all manner of equally absurd theories, like reality is a computer simulation or a trance state, etc, and it’s just much simpler to say reality is.  This calls for responsibility: the parakeet I forgot to feed before my trip is dead when I get home.  Perceptions also are governed by certain laws, and unless your mind has been seriously altered, other similar minds are getting more or less the same show.  Possibly my green is your red,  but that doesn’t really change the fact that we’ll both always point to the same thing and call it red until one of us eats certain fungi or has a brain stroke.
Some people will object to this thinking.  That is because they are possessed by the demon of metaphysics.  Don’t question it.

I’m constantly in the process of revising what I think I know and looking into all sets of ideas no matter how they’ve been pre-labeled.  I once operated on the theory that you could only debunk something completely by buying into it.  However, if you try this, make sure you have an exit strategy because deprogramming is a difficult and painful process.  It’s possible to give in to your own brainwashing with the help of others.  So, I no longer operate on that theory.  See, I’m learning.

It seems to me that conspiracy theories are to certain leftists what fundamentalist Christianity is to many right wingers. Of course, it’s not that neat a dichotomy, but both are faith-based phenomenon. The fundies have a paranoid suspicion that there is an unseen authority that we had best do our utmost to follow the dictates of (and that “bad” people are in denial of), and the left wing conspiracy adherents have a feeling there is some hideous authoritarian scam attempting to encroach on our freedoms, the scope, complexity and efficiency of which puts Hitler’s daydreams of a new world order to shame.

There is an explanation for these phenomena that I’ve recently been introduced to by psychiatrist Andy Thomson, M.D.  It’s called hyperactive agency detection.  Basically, we evolved this tendency to intuit that there is an intelligence or intelligent agency behind events prior to actually investigating them.  His example is that we might think a shadow is a thief, but we rarely think a thief is a shadow.  This helped our ancestors survive because of the better safe than sorry principle.  If something goes bump in the night, you are more likely to survive if you assume it might be a threat.  However, you are often going to be wrong.

I don’t doubt that there is an undue influence of big business in our lives and in our government. But does a small group of bankers basically run everything, controlling every aspect of the federal government and every government on Earth, all of which is just a big show to make people imagine they are being properly governed, and that there are heroes and enemies who actually are mere actors on a stage?  Was 9/11 just a Hollywood production along with the moon landings?  According to some of these voices, the Bilderberg Group is the true world government and consists of soulless, evil “lizard” people, possibly aliens, who have built underground bunkers in which they plan to reside while setting off neutron bombs to wipe out most of humanity, so they’ll get lots of juicy real estate for themselves, where they can writhe around on heaps of treasures they’ll guard like dragons.

Marijuana and hemp also spring conspiracy theories, possibly through their psychoactive action.  Legalizing marijuana, for many of the same reasons prohibition of alcohol was ended, could be a good idea. Illegal marijuana just makes criminals rich and criminalizes otherwise potentially productive citizens.  I think it should be legalized, and I hate the effect of smoking or eating marijuana.  Just because I think it should be legalized doesn’t mean I think it will cure all of mankind’s ills.  I’m not quite convinced that it would put big oil out of business while dressing us, reversing global warming and heralding the next golden age, though it may do some of these things to a degree. I think there also may be something to the idea that the government fears it as something that distracts from the capitalist work ethic, but I also know many hardworking potheads.

Global warming has been termed a conspiracy theory.  I don’t believe global warming is the result of a conspiracy of scientists for an instant. That conception is the result of actual action (not so secret) among right wing politicians, the right wing media and big business, who have in fact established think tanks that hire out hack scientists to suggest unscientific findings. The goal is to paint all scientists as mere profiteers and distract from themselves, the actual profiteers, and this sways an astonishing number of people who don’t believe in global warming or evolution who continue to vote. Scientists rely on evidence and, although their ideas change, growth in understanding over time is always the result of evidence and investigation and never the result of hatching baseless theories because of a rigorous system of peer review. In all likelihood, 97 percent of climate scientists don’t believe that global warming has a man made source just because they’re just trying to milk the system.   However, a good point is raised here.  They probably are under funded.

Granted, I can’t completely disprove some of these conspiracy theories in the same way I can’t completely disprove the Immaculate Conception, but I’ve accepted the idea that you don’t need to provide evidence something didn’t happen. It’s the other way around.

I’m not going to accept claims that even sources independent of corporate control don’t accept when they have a rigorous research model. There may be something to such claims, they’re more likely than a pastor making a lame person to leap, but I’m not going to buy into them just because they are backed by convictions, earned as they might be by hardship, disappointment, alienation and being exploited.  Those are actual phenomenon, but the conjecture that arises in response to them must be assayed in the same way as any scientific theory: testing and demonstration and peer review.

There are many conspiracy theories I’d like to buy into.  I’d like to, but then I might as well accept an endless array of unsubstantiated claims.  Then, I’ll have to practice speaking in tongues and praying for the end of droughts.   This seems to get lots of donations from big business…so maybe I should seriously consider that.