Are the conspiracy theories circulating around us a sign of the times? Are there more conspiracy theorists today than in the past? Are they thriving because the times are right or is it because of technology and the web that all of this is happening?
The conspiracy syndrome is as old as the world and the one who outlined its philosophy in an amazing way was Karl Popper in an essay on social conspiracy theory "Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge".
“The theory in question, more primitive than many forms of theism, is similar to that which we find in Homer. He perceived the authority of the gods in such a way that what was happening on the plain in front of Troy was just a reflection of the conspiracies brewing on Olympus. The social conspiracy theory is indeed a form of theism, that is, the belief in deities whose whims or desires govern everything. It is a consequence of the failure to refer to god and the consequent question: "Who is in his place?" That position is occupied by various people and groups of power—insidious pressure groups, whom you can blame for orchestrating the Great Depression and all the ills we suffer from….”
I have always loathed conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists.
I believe that some people's penchant for conspiracy theories is rather psychiatric in nature, a form of paranoia. The psychiatrically paranoid sees the whole world conspiring against him, the socially paranoid sees everywhere plotters, dark forces and foreign fingers, against his country, his religion, his ethnicity or I don't know what else he could think of. A conspiracy theorist is one whose imaginations know no bounds.
The second category is clearly more dangerous than the first. If some are convinced that the history of the world is directed by dark forces and insidious planners, how does one react?
But he simply doesn't react, he doesn't look to find the real causes, he leaves to the easy solution, it's more convenient. The Libyan dictator Gaddafi, shortly before he fell from power, was convinced that the uprisings were due to a conspiracy of foreign powers who had drugged all the Libyans who were protesting, without ever bothering to think for a moment whether this was also happening for some another reason which was of course his rigid dictatorial regime. The same thing happened with the fall of existing socialism. The few (around the world and Greece) remaining, incurably Stalinist and pro-Soviet, even today believe that he was a conspiratorial finger of capitalism and the West and that Gorbachev - who died recently - was an agent of dark forces of reaction, of international capital, of of capitalism …..And they, like the aforementioned Gaddafi, cannot think, even for a moment, that there might be some other reason; that common sense leads us to think that if this edifice was dissolved overnight in the it was composed, without opening a nose, without any reaction from the people - who so much and continuously speak in his name - is because it was a bleak and inhumane political extreme, a rigid dictatorship that the entire people (except of course the nomenklatura) hated. And that maybe God Marx was wrong somewhere. (I'm getting completely sacrilegious now...)
But also in our country with the recent crisis and the memoranda, how many conspiratorial scenarios were released! For dark forces and insidious centers, of multiple origins and natures, whose one goal was to destroy Greece...
Every conspiracy theory directs the imagination of the believer towards hypothetical dangers and away from the real causes.
As Chomsky says "the greatest benefit from fantasizing about a supposed conspiracy derives from the very institutions that the conspiracy theory aims to attack."
Suspicious interpretations absolve us of our responsibilities because it makes us think that there is a secret behind what worries us. The secret gives the one who holds it a position of power, and the concealment of this secret constitutes a conspiracy against us. Conspiracy psychology is born from the fact that the most obvious interpretations of events do not satisfy us, it bothers us to accept them. It takes strength and mental honesty with ourselves to accept what we are not comfortable with.
Is it easy to shake one's sure, unshakable beliefs?
Of course not.
But it is often necessary.
"Doubt is not pleasant, but certainty is absurd" as Voltaire says.
We could in many cases simply use common sense to understand the emptiness and lack of seriousness of conspiracy theories. Umberto Eco, a true anti-conspiracy theorist, in his book "Pape Satan Aleppo" characteristically says:
"I appeal only to what I shall call 'evidence of silence.' An example of the evidence of silence is used, for example, against those who suggest that the American moon landing was a fake television show. If the American spacecraft had not actually landed on the moon, there were those who were in a position to check it and had an interest in saying so, and that was the Soviets; so if the Soviets did not say a word, here is the proof that the Americans did go to the moon . End of story".
After all of this, of course, I could perhaps come to the paradoxical conclusion that behind every false conspiracy there may always be the conspiracy of someone who has an interest in presenting it to us as true.
Seems very conspiratorial to me!
Am I… slowly becoming a conspiracy theorist without realizing it?