Oftentimes, conspiracy researchers/theorists (it’s so hard to tell where the line between “us” and “them” is these days) are just as much in service to the Spectacle as anyone else.
Here’s another thought from a regular reader, Ian, that makes another pretty good point:
In both mythology and conspiracy theory, people are taking facts, stories, images from the world around them and are drawing connections between things that aren’t at first obviously connected. But like you say, conspiracy theorists never seem to do much to change things.
I think that’s because conspiracy theories just reinforce our feelings of helplessness. They’re a negative mythology. As Campbell points out, myths teach us how to live in the world and control our own lives. But conspiracy theory teach us how to live in fear, in a world controlled by SOMEONE ELSE.
It’s a great point and I’d like to add my own thoughts to it.
Now Ian’s point is true for conspiracy theory consumers. Those who indulge in it as a hobby, who, whether they admit or not, get into conspiracy theory as entertainment. They are similar to folks who love to watch graphic horror films because of the adrenalin it allows them to release when they get the shit scared out of them. Unfortunately, conspiracy consumers are in a worse position then the horror fans because the horror fans get some sort of catharsis out of their spectatorship. Conspiracy consumers don’t…because they must believe that this stuff never stops and is never over in order to get their fix. And the fix is two-fold, actually. It’s one part “Isn’t the world fucked up and crazy and horrifying and doesn’t it make you so scared? It makes me scared!”; and it’s one part “I’m better than all of you because I subject myself to this information and I’m scared as shit and you’re not!” I feel these guys only too well. I’ve been there.
Now, there are also conspiracy researchers and theorists who have the information, are pissed off, and are doing something about it. These are the guys who’ve been inspired by Alex Jones, in large part, and have been a big part of confronting politicians and industrialists out in public, doing the 9/11 Truth thing, and god bless them because they are fighting the good fight, as they see it, getting their adrenalin fix to boot, and learning a shit load about how the world works through their active experiences. They’ve certainly learned some things that I probably haven’t and maybe never will. I’m definitely not better than them, but I’m not worse either.
Which brings me to some humble reservations/criticism of the new breed of conspiracy activists.
I just can’t help getting the sense that even though they’re learning about themselves in the midst of their public badgering of the Rockefellers, Bill Maher or whoever, that they’re way too vulnerable to thinking they’re better than other people. And that’s a dangerous flaw, in my un-expert opinion.
Plus that there’s just so much anger involved in what they’re doing and that tends toward a very negative addiction. Whenever I see footage of these young guys out there and they go, in ten seconds flat, from asking some political puppet like Hilary or a “Dark Lord” like Zbegniew Zabrinski a question to shouting and screaming and calling these folks “CFR scum” and “murderers” and the like, I get flashbacks to the LaRouchers I used to hang around (that’s another story). Well, if you’re behavioral M.O. is the same as the LaRouchers, then you might want to re-evaluate what sort of energy you are attracting and putting out; you might want to be careful about what kind of emotional and spiritual imbalances you’re encouraging in yourself and others. And I’m absolutely not disputing that these politicians and other so-called important people of power have blood on their hands. I’m just questioning the road all this “gotcha”! activism and aggressive heckling is leading to…
It seems to me that, ultimately, this kind of behavior, is operating on the assumption that the individual must force someone else to stop doing something. It’s seems to suggest these conspiracy activists believe that a psychopath should behave differently than the way a psychopath, by his or its very nature–because let’s face it, many of our institutions are inherently psychopathic–act. They are incapable of acting differently than they do. So it seems a waste of time to demand that they change and then to yell at them and scream at them for what they are. Do you think that’s suddenly going to make them go all teary-eyed and say, “You’re right! I am a brutal, murderous, compulsively lying, psychopath! I never realized it and now I understand that I’ve been hurting you! And I’m going to stop right now!”? Even if you got that sort of reaction, you know these institutions and powerful folks ain’t gonna up and stop doing what’s been working for them from time immemorial. So we’ve got to ask ourselves: What about us hasn’t been working and how do we change it? Simply put, we can’t change the psychopaths, only ourselves. Once we do that, we can choose to recognize, avoid and turn away from the psychopaths and their institutions. We can choose to find our own way again, as individuals and communities. That’s not going to happen overnight or even in fifty years.  What it will look like when we finally find our way again probably won’t have anything to do with being able to, with impunity, spit in the face of those who’ve designed and benefited from our individual or collective marginality. If the best we can do is to put out that “spit in the eye” energy, we may never see what it looks like for us to be free of the psychopaths. Then, we might never see what it’s like to be living independently and mutually as whole people and communities. That world of independent but mutually supportive people is something I don’t want to miss, but I get the feeling that some conspiracy culture folks would be too busy shouting to notice.
Besides, that whole “We’re going to follow you, scream at you, and intimidate you until you change” thing: isn’t that what THEY do?
Wise words.
> It seems to me that, ultimately, this kind of behavior, is operating on the assumption that the individual must force someone else to stop doing something.
Which can’t be done… this is the shadow. As someone said here before, fighting evil just creates more shadow. I’m beginning to suspect, however, that the shadow itself can be fought with vision…
Speedbird – word. Love the vision…image.
cadeveo – man is it good to have you back and posting. Whatever you spent you time doing, you have a certain clarity in your posts to cut through the noise. Thanks, man.
I just received a notice from wordpress that they have some “concern about the content” of my blog and my ability to post has been temporarily suspended!
I kid you not, folks.
I can’t much understand what the “concern” is, so, as they asked, I’ve sent them an inter-wordpress e-mail to find out what the deal is. Making no assumptions here, folks. I’m completely puzzled, really. I don’t even want to begin to speculate on it.
I’ll keep you all posted via the comments on this thread if, for some reason, the issue isn’t resolved quickly.
Speedbird said “this is the shadow” -yes. My father was a conspiracy activist. I’d come home from soccer practice to find our den overtaken by the ever-present underground group of plotting destroyers. One day I told him, “I’m not typing the minutes anymore. This crap is scary. Why can’t we have Tupperware parties?”
Years later, I wrote a poem about them and called it “Shadows”.
Still no word from wordpress. Here’s the notice on my dashboard:
“Warning: We have a concern about some of the content on your blog. Please click here to contact us as soon as possible to resolve the issue and re-enable posting.”
I just wrote them a more considered response/query regarding whatever the issue is.
We’ll see what happens!
By the way, chelz: that Tupperware party anecdote is hilarious!
Alright, I know this is an incredibly late reply in the blog-realm, but I finally had a chance to work through my thoughts on conspiracy research and figured I might as well follow through on my promise to add a comment here.
First though, I want to say I agree with your reply to my original point. Conspiracy theories, when consumed, have three basic effects:
1) “I am better than everyone, because I know that EVERYTHING is controlled from behind the scenes. You are all foolish and deluded, while I am one of those-who-know.”
2) “I am completely powerless. Everything is controlled by powerful elites and there is nothing I can do. I am better off just hiding in fear.”
3) “There are many things going on behind the scenes that I don’t understand. Therefore, it is best to have a fuzzy logic approach to this kind of thing. Maybe everything is controlled by powerful elites. Maybe not. Really, who cares unless it confronts me directly?”
RAW said something, somewhere, about the results of consuming conspiracy theory being either paranoia or ambivalence. And between the two, I think, lies apathy, with ambivalence being the ideal end goal. If anything, conspiracy consumption should be used as a way to inoculate yourself against paranoia…
As for people who hit the pavement, do the research, and confront the powerful elites, well, like you say, they do so using the same negative energies that they are trying to fight. Confronting negative energy with negative energy just won’t work. Either this elite person knows that what they are doing is evil (in which case you yelling at them won’t make a bit of difference), or they just don’t see the evil in it at all (in which case you’re dealing with some sort of shadow projection, either theirs, yours, or most likely, both).
But let’s step back here. Rather than analyze the million different ways such confrontations may or may not produce results, let’s look at the history. These conspiracy activists are taking a page from the activists of the 60s and 70s. Protests and marches are simply a more peaceful, less in your face version of the same kind of confrontation. One lead to the other the same way that hippies who got fed up waiting for change lead to punk rock.
And those hippy activists got their ideas from the Civil Rights protesters of the 50s and 60s.
While the Civil Rights people, at least MLK, based a lot of their strategies on Gandhi’s nonviolent protests against the British in India.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that I think the basic show-them-how-they-are-wrong approach really begins with Gandhi, and so a comparison between Gandhi’s activism and these other forms of activism is important.
What becomes apparent is that with each generation of protester/activist, you have a weaker and weaker effect:
- Gandhi got the British out and India got independence.
- The Civil Rights movement started the ball rolling for racial equality and segregation was stopped, but there’s still a lot of inequalities and racism in society in general.
- The hippies, well, the Vietnam War stopped eventually, and so did the threat of nuclear war, but Vietnam went on for a loooong time, and nuclear armament is still a big problem.
- And the 9/11 Truth/Alex Jones type of people, well, everyone who wants to know about this stuff now knows about it, but has any “elite” stepped forward and admitted to any of this? Has any of this in-your-face confrontation lead to any actual results?
Gandhi saw an unjust system and broke unjust laws in a completely just way. By doing so, he forced those in power to admit that they were wrong and to withdraw.
It’s the old writer’s cliche: “show, don’t tell”.
Sure, the world wars probably helped get the Brittish out, but don’t try to tell my Gandhi didn’t have any effect.
If there is a change that needs to be made in the world, you have to be able to embody that change without bringing in any anger or confrontation. This is the most powerful form of showing evil it’s true face. Ever since Gandhi, each generation of protester has shown more anger and more resentment. People have copied Ghandi’s techniques, without understanding the way he used them.
The core of it, I think, is to understand that the powerful elite do not self-identify as evil. No one, probably not even Hitler, ever thought of themselves as an evil person. In order to effect change in people, you have to be able to identify with the way they see themselves. They are human too, whether or not you think they act like it.
Want to know how someone could perpetrate such evil things, and still see themselves as humane?
Look here.
And then here.
And then here.
Now I am sure anyone can argue the specific points I made any way they choose. But to do so would be to miss the issue at hand. Being able to construct a rational refutation to a certain point does not necessarily invalidate the conclusion that point was used to illustrate. It’s just that I’m just too lazy to think up perfect, unassailable examples. =)
Anyway, I really don’t want to offend anyone with this. I only want to point out a pattern that I see present, and maybe find a way to help make conspiracy research a bit more effective.
And thanks to Cadeveo for giving me a opportunity to get all this out of my head in an orderly fashion…
This is great. I want to quote it at length in a post when I have time.
Thanks! Feel free to do what you like with it. I did put it in your site. =)
I will probably put a link to it myself, from my own site, at some point. I’m very happy with how it turned out.
I was thinking of doing some confrontations, inspired by alex jones and my own research. Cadeveo and Ian make a lot of great points. However, some of the confrontations are not really about shouting “CFR sucks…and f the NWO”. Some of it is just trying to talk and ask these people questions. If the political science professor at MIT who is in the CFR is not going to let an alum from MIT ask him about why he still teaches freshman the false left-right paradigm garbage on the first day of class(ok I’ll have to get around to that more diplomatically)…It seems like we aren’t even allowed to talk to these people. Part of that is my own fear induced by consuming too much conspiracy product.
However, when I tried to interview a girl who was on the 9/11 comission she got very upset and acted like I was assualting her when I was just trying to understand how they could ignore certain evidence. Then I just got total refusal to discuss the topic. To be clear, I never did any of the shouting or name calling stuff.
oh well, I do like this website..good job guys
Well, I think a lot of people make assumptions and cover stuff up, not because they’re part of some conspiracy, but because they don’t want to face the facts that their investigations are leading towards. It’s related to Aronson and Carlsmith’s Forbidden Toy Study. Their denial is the result of a subtle confrontation with these issues, not a strong and sudden one (especially because these commissions proceed in such a slow, rational manner).
If someone catches a hint of a conspiracy at a subconscious level, and steers clear of it because they can’t deal with the restructuring of their world required to absorb it, then they’ve just reinforced their own belief system as something that does not include any of these facts. And so the truth gets further hidden.
Even some of the people perpetrating the evil stuff probably only want to forget about it. If you have that kind of power, it’s got to be pretty easy to forget the bad parts of the complicated decisions you have to make, particularly if those parts never come back to bite you in the ass.
And the actual evil people doing the bad stuff willingly and knowingly? Well, they’re even more happy that it’s all forgotten.
Multiply this by every journalist who wants to keep their job, every politician desperate to stay in office, and every CEO trying to please the shareholders, and you end up with a bunch of German volk who think that that Hitler guy can’t possibly be all that bad…
The problem, then, becomes how to convince people of these truths that they don’t see as being self-evident. To reference the forbidden toy study again, direct confrontation leads to rebellion. Soft, gradual confrontation leads to acceptance and adjustment. It is best to make people gradually believe that something better is possible. Like Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world.
Telling people who are fully invested in the system that the system is fucked will not fix the system…
Nice reference on the forbidden toy study.
” Soft, gradual confrontation leads to acceptance and adjustment
Telling people who are fully invested in the system that the system is fucked will not fix the system…
”
so doesn’t this then suggest that the confrontaional videos should just use less agressive questioning….no name calling etc?
“Mr Brezinski, do you see any strategic weakness with encouraging the Chinese to support Pol Pot?”
“if so in what ways can we avoid these strategic errors in the future?”
Questions along these lines should be repeated so often that the premise becomes a given. This would be progress, as of right now merely asserting the premise (which Zbig announces in his book to be a fact) gets one immediately labeld as a conpiracy nut.
However, 99% of the public has no idea who zbig or kissinger is in the first place. I guess I should just play with my kids more.
Wanna know one of the favorite things I like doing with my kids….I make shallow idiotic assertions that seem sorta plausible to 3 and 5 year olds…my 3 and 5 year olds think for a minute and then start to argue…I persist with my abusrdity and they start laughing/yelling that I am wrong or trying to figure otu how to explain my error to me!…I love that. I then try to let them know that they were smart to question my assertions.
I doubt directly confronting Zbig or Kissinger would have much effect on their behavior. I’m sure they’re either aware of the facts or have completely blocked them from their consciousness.
So basically, such confrontations are done more in an attempt to convince the audience of some facts. And I believe that having a questioner in an audience stand up and ask the man on the stage in a suit a question with the intent of pointing out “you are so damned evil” (no matter how indirectly) is not really an effective form of communication.
Most of the audience has already, at least subconsciously, bought into the fact that the figure being interviewed is the authority. By attacking even just their perception of that person as an authority figure, you are also attacking their own internalized systems of authority.
The difference in what you do when playing with your kids is that you love your kids. Our continuing to question these “leaders” is never going to convince them to say “ok ok, I love you guys, and guess what? You’re right after all.” =)
Anyway, my main point is that confrontation just leads to confrontation. It’s kind of a martial arts sort of thing.
If someone did want to confront Zbig, for example, it would be best to consider, beforehand, exactly why he might think that supporting Pol Pot was a good idea. Or just ask him, honestly, why he did it (especially if it’s something he admits to doing in his book). I haven’t read his book, so maybe he answers that, but the point is that you can’t start a dialogue with a confrontation, unless the other person is already looking for a way to change (which I’m sure he’s not). It’s the same logic as having an intervention for an alcoholic. Asking someone to examine their own subconscious blocks that they use to make sense of their world is only going to work if it comes from a place of love, not a place of anger.
If you want people to see the error of their ways, you have to find a way for them to realize the error of their ways. Change has to come from within. And figuring out how to do that is impossible unless you can somehow get inside their headspace and see them as they see themselves.
And actually, the same is true whether you’re trying to confront Zbig himself, or you’re trying to confront the image of Zbig as a authority figure in the heads of the people in the audience.
Here’s a better worded version of what I’m trying to say, and that’s the last I’ll post here on the subject.
That is a really good point. I enjoy reading this prospective. I do think it is worthy of following the logic to a better decision on the part of those who feel they must “do something to fight this”.
The star wars book I was reading yesterday had Obi Wan recomending to a younger jedi that they “must do what they must, but maybe they can do it in a unexpected way”…the plan he came up with afterwards was very effective. If only we had more jedi on our side.
BTW,
I truthfully haven’t read enough of Zbig’s book(grand chessboard) to put it in the true context, but from some of the other things I’ve read from him I honestly think the idea for justifying it was that if we(the empire), can set off our enemies against each other and create general chaos and problems amongst potential rivals and keep the junior rivals on roughly the same levels with each other then it is much easier for our empire to keep a safe position in the world.
I can see Zbig’s point there, given his perspective and long term placement high in the system. Of course, I agree that we could find better ways of doing such things.
However, I was looking it up on Amazon, and I noticed he’s got a newer (2003) book, the description for which read:
“We are in the midst of what Brzezinski rightly calls a “global political awakening.” Technology has made global “have-nots” painfully conscious of their relative deprivation. It has also given them the tools to punish those they see as blocking their aspirations. If the United States is to avoid becoming the target of their resentment, its foreign policy must be seen as serving their interests as well as its own. That means exercising self-restraint rather than pressing every advantage that comes to a superpower; it means listening to others and not just working to preserve our own peace and prosperity but helping others to build their own. The Global Leader IV who can find a way to translate these precepts into practical policies should be able to impress even the redoubtable Prof. Brzezinski.”
If that’s what Obama’s going to do, I will definitely willingly support him. “Listening to others and not just working to preserve our own peace and prosperity but helping others to build their own”? That is exactly what everyone needs to be doing right now.
This is a fine treatment of an important issue. Thanks cadeveo, ian, Gabe
cadeveo wrote…
“Those who indulge in it as a hobby, who, whether they admit or not, get into conspiracy theory as entertainment.”
To be fair, some people get into it as a way to bring unconscious elements into consciousness. The trouble happens as we apply an old filter to new information. We then get sucked into the same ‘cone of resonance’ that has driven culture for a very long time now. If we are to flip these negative polarity expressions we will need a center of focus that creates new correspondences between our categories. To be insulated from the psychic parasites (think-2nd chakra) we must create a cone of resonance that does not depend on separating the body and the spirit.
The advantage of our current system of psychical training is that we always have an opponent that we can pin the blame on for the messed up nature of this world. The disadvantage, of course is that this system can only produce a messed up world.
As ian wrote…
In both mythology and conspiracy theory, people are taking facts, stories, images from the world around them and are drawing connections between things that aren’t at first obviously connected. But like you say, conspiracy theorists never seem to do much to change things.
We all pretty much see things through the same ‘frame’ and this frame (dualism) has conditioned the collective psyche for centuries. If all understanding is mediated through form, then we best examine our forms more closely. I am looking forward to the time when many more will accept responsibility and actively participate in the reshaping of our collective psychical condition. The usefulness of new criteria for understanding will depend on its ability to separate the substance of myth from its co-opted version where the substance has been stripped from the form (think-freedom).
Further explanation at: http://guerrillaontology.
Thats; http://guerrillaontology.blogspot.com
Not that I should talk, but when ya gonna update that site, sounder?
Yeah, I second that. Your two sites have a lot of great stuff, for only having a few posts. =)
I still don’t support Zbig, anyone who is in favor of a global carbon tax or who pushes lies about global warming is a dangerous scumbag.
” foreign policy must be seen as serving their interests as well as its own”
you see he cares how his foreign polic is seen by others but he doesn’t care if he helps kill a lot of folks.