We’re told the world is full of conspiracies. From the assassination of JFK to Diana, no icon is safe from them. From the fake Moon Landings to Alien technology, nothing is ever what it seems.
We’re told the world is full of conspiracies. Sinister Illuminati-style organizations work in the shadows, manipulating everything we do. No one is safe. No one is untouched. Everything is under control is a double-edged statement.
Conspiracies have happened in the past. The Tudors and Stuarts in Britain were plagued by them, and much of the establishment of the UK was the result of them. But does that mean conspiracies still happen today as people think?
Yes, they do. But the problem is, we know about them – Watergate, Iran/Contra – we KNOW! This is because big organizations leak like a sieve. This is our best defence against real conspiracy – the very organizations that would love to conspire, but never get away with it.

SCEPTICISM

I’m sceptical of conspiracy theories. JFK was killed by a loner; Diana died in a tragic drunken crash. But isn’t that boring? We feed on the sensational, so we have a need to make things more than they really are.
It’s so easy to make a conspiracy theory. The reasons are many, but they begin with the simple fact that life is full of coincidences. We don’t like to think that they’re natural, so there has to be a human agent making the theory fit so nicely.
Modern media is then added to the recipe. Itself infatuated with sensationalism, fact and fiction is merged in a relentless need to provide us with information. Whether that information is true or not is irrelevant to the sensationalism of ratings.

POSTMODERNISM, HISTORY & THINGS

We live in a postmodern world. This is a world where barriers merge, where high and low culture mix; where the symbol is more important than the substance. It has eaten away at our ability to define things properly. Definites are bad – confusion reigns!
History is no help. History is not history at all. It is contemporary events of the past initially written by the victors, and then re-written at intervals since, every rewrite infected with the ideas of the present placed on the past. So the past and present are fake. Information itself conspires against us.
Even an event is not itself. People witness an event, but all have a different idea of what happened. Soon, an event becomes an event plus the appreciation of it. Which appreciation? The one that gains the widest consensus. Reality, you see, is relative to what we want to see.
In such a psycho-social world, who do we believe? We can’t believe authority. So we believe the theorists, forever manipulating our minds and reality. Of course, it’s always been thus. But in the past we called it superstition. But of course, we’re not superstitious nowadays, are we? Yea, right!!!

GETTING TO THE TRUTH?

Conspiracy theories are wrong. It’s just that the world is a confusing mass of dis-information. And it does, of course, assist those who DO conspire against us? But hang on a minute? Conspiracies are wrong but people DO conspire? Surely a contradiction?
No, not really. Conspiracy goes on all the time. It is better known as politics and entrepreneurial manipulations of the economy – in other words, Big Biz. But this is different to conspiracy THEORY. The latter is sensationalist speculation, the former is how the world has always worked. But isn’t this a conspiracy theory in itself?
Absolutely. So do you see how conspiracy theories even make it impossible to describe how things have always been? Makes you wonder who likes conspiracy theorists the most – us, or Big Biz. For what a marvelous smokescreen they provide.