Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Beyoncé is Correct: “Y’all Haters Corny with that Illuminati Mess”
As everyone knows, one of the things that is expressly forbidden here at Ricochet is trafficking in conspiracy theories. Beyoncé herself takes the “haters” and conspiracy theorists to task in her most recent video. Case closed, obviously.
But what makes people believe in these kinds of things? Why do people insist on vast conspiracies, whether they’re “right wing” ones (thanks, Hillary!) or the “new world order” direct from the Trilateral Commission? (Don’t click on the second link, by the way … Life is too short.)
What’s the source of the pathology? From Boing Boing:
A study by Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky from the University of Texas found a correlation between a belief in superstitions and conspiracies and a sense of helplessness about your own life and your ability to steer it.
Which found, unsurprisingly, that people who felt their lives and destinies were out of control were more likely to see plots and conspiracies elsewhere. If you have zero control over your own life, you tend to assume that someone else must have it. But if you feel like you have some control and agency, you realize how random and chaotic the world can be.
So how does a therapist treat this? Here’s what they did:
So a lack of control not only affects our perceptions, but our actions too. What happens if you restore control? Will that reduce one’s propensity for seeing false patterns? To find out, Whitson and Galinsky asked volunteers to remember events where they had control or lacked it, and tested their tendency for see shapes in snowy images, and for believing conspiracy theories. This time, however, some of the volunteers were given a chance just before the tasks to complete a questionnaire on a value that was very important to them.
Studies have found that this sort of self-affirming exercise can help to counteract feelings of helplessness of distress, so the duo reasoned that it should go some way toward negating the tendency to see patterns brought on by a lack of control. And that’s exactly what happened – compared to volunteers who went straight into the tasks, those who remembered lacking control but had a chance to affirm their closely-held values were less likely to see patterns in snowy images or conspiracies in everyday events. Their behaved in the same way as volunteers who had thought about being in control in the first place.
That’s all you have to do for the conspiracy theorists in your life: Just remind them that they’re powerful and in control and help them connect with moments in their lives when they had the most personal agency.
It would work with Hillary. And it would work with people who see everything in terms of the all-powerful Republican “Establishment.”
Published in Politics
So you want me to think there’s no Republican elite planning to assassinate Trump and Cruz? HA! I saw Mitch buying a sniper rifle just yesterday.
Even the bravest who are slain shall not dissemble their surprise on waking to find valor reign, even as on earth, in Paradise;
And where they sought without the sword, wide fields of asphodel fore’er, to find that the utmost reward for daring should be still to dare…
‘Tis of the essence of life here, though we chose greatly, still to lack the lasting memory at all clear, that life has for us on the rack nothing but what we somehow chose. Thus are we wholly stripped of pride, in the pain that has but one close, bearing it crushed and mystified.”
Frost.
Right.
Conspiracy theories just one of the things that the Rosicrucians use to control our lives.
And The Semi-Conscious Liberation Army.
Them too.
This analysis is all wrong. They’re out to get me precisely because they sense my power and control over events.
All conspiracy theories except those about Trump or Cruz’s pending impeachment I guess.
You could always take a conspiracy theorist to lunch and talk things over. Mmm, Bilderburgers.
You had me at “Don’t click on the second link, by the way … Life is too short”. Very, very few links in life are worth clicking…I only clicked “Read More” so that I could post this!
Sometimes it is to instill meaning into an otherwise meaningless occurrence. The JFK theories thrive on this because if he was just killed by a random nutjob it makes his death pointless whereas he becomes a martyr if he was killed by conspirators opposing him.
I used to work with a guy at a high tech consulting firm who worked in graphics. I could tell when he was in one of his “moods” when he’d roam the halls in his hoodie (hood up) peering out the huge windows at the sky….he told us about chemtrails. We tried to humor him…and once showed me some very creepy, bizarre publications that I had never heard of – like a Ripley’s meets House of Horrors…..for the life of me, I had no idea how he was employed there – he was entertaining, then I started feeling very uncomfortable around him. I think they eventually figured out he had some issues and found a way to move him on to find other employment.
I saw a story on a Catholic network about people speaking out about the Masons. They were in it and left. It sounded scary – I always considered it conspiracy theory stuff – so I looked it up, and found that quite a bit has been written about it by various popes, going back centuries. It was very interesting and nothing to sneeze at. An old friend in Boston and her husband were looking for a new church – they liked this traditional church that had to for some reason, temporarily borrow a Mason hall to hold services – she said she had a hard time focusing because of the big “throne” on the altar – not kidding! Corny with that!
Beyonce is my go-to person for philosophy and political analysis. Even economics. But not music. Maybe it’s me.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I am a conspiracy connoisseur.
Only the finer conspiracies need apply. To all budding theorists out there: “The Jews control X” is jejune, for all values of X.
You’re just phoning it in until you figure out how the Amish are involved.
Aw man. Beat me to it. This scene was the best
So to help conspiracy theorists you must convince them that a lie is true? Really?
(This is a little tangential….)
Does anyone here not believe that a horde of Leftist thinkers and activists have sought, over the decades, to hurt America (and the West in general), and that they, from time to time, worked together on this project, and that they knew what they were doing? If this can go on, doesn’t one need more than a sneer and an out-of-hand dismissal as a counter-argument to at least some conspiracy theories? At least at first? After the 9/11 attacks, I found myself wondering about a few things, and few claims being made.
I think most people who scoff at conspiracy theorists do it because everyone around them does, not because they have thought through, and understand, the epistemological flaws with conspiracy theories.
Or, maybe I have too broad an idea about what you mean by “conspiracy theory”, or maybe they’re on a continuum with other theories….
So my practice of procrastinating on drone work by playing a video game I’ve beaten 100 times before seems to be vindicated.
Could this post be a Ricochet conspiracy?
Look up the Taxil hoax. It is rather funny in a strange sort of way. In the 1890s a conman named Leo Taxil played a hoax on the Catholic Church and the Pope fell for it. For over a decade he wrote stuff up about Freemasons being in league with the devil and sold it to the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIII and anybody that would buy it. The Church pushed it out around the world as a Church supported point of view. Eventually Leo Taxil admitted that it was all a big con and embarrassed the Church and the Pope. The Church stopped pushing it but did not withdraw or contradict their position. To this day a Catholic is not supposed to be a Freemason, but that is related to a papal bull which pretty much sets the Church’s position into stone.
An overview from Wikipedia for what it is worth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxil_hoax
From Jurassic Park:
Ellie Sattler: You never had control! That’s the illusion!
No, they generally thought and think they’re helping it. Almost no one sets out to do evil a-la-Snidely Whiplash.
This is true, but it’s also generally the demeanor of the conspiracy theorists that turns people off. Their obsession with huge complex conspiracies is matched by their refusal to acknowledge the immediate problems they face in their own life.
I know several conspiracy theorists. They love to talk about whatever their newest conspiracy obsession is. They absolutely hate to face their drug addiction and inability to hold down a job.
I have always believed that those who obsess on conspiracy do so because of a need to feel that they have insight and knowledge that others do not. In other words, they are privy to a grand secret that makes them special for the knowledge.
Of course, while a conspiracy requires coordination and secrecy, as Owen Findy points out, like minded people seeking a common goal does not necessarily require conspiracy, yet can be more destructive.
Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get me… and just because many individuals without coordination are working independently towards fundamental transformation of the society, it doesn’t mean they aren’t working against us and dangerous for it.
A fervent belief in one world government may not be an ‘according to Hoyle’ conspiracy , but it is certainly a movement that can’t be discounted or ignored.
I recently read that the fact that there are so few Americans in the Panama Papers is evidence of just how good American fat cats are at hiding their money.
Well I read that the lack of Americans in them were due to it being a George Soros-controlled leak. Because reasons.
An there are 6 letters in ‘Panama’, ‘Papers’ and ‘George’. 666 anyone?
Panama Papers are for wimps. Americans commit their crimes in full daylight and get away with it. We call things by their opposites. Bribes are called speaking fees or donations. Insider traders are called bankers or asset managers. Racists are called champions of diversity. Who needs to hide money offshore in this kind of open corruption? We just redefined corruption down, so no one is corrupt.
The world is filled with outhouse lawyers and witless believers. The current edifice of our political system is dependent upon it. Politicians do not tell us what they will support or what they believe, they tell us what they will do (re: accomplish.) We are all capable of knowing that this is categorically untrue, yet we take this in like witless rubes and then get mad when nothing is accomplished, or when things move in exactly the opposite direction.
The opposition, on the other hand, does the opposite. They take on the strategies of used car salesmen and provide just enough detail, allowing us to believe that they will support the modest path. However, everyone in the know understands that what they truly believe and will do is quite another thing. Marriage is between a man and a woman (huzzah for SSM.) We need stronger border control and immigration enforcement (release, don’t deport and use creative strategies to unilaterally defer deportation.) Work should be a requirement for public assistance (exempt most from the welfare to work requirement.) We need better control over student lending (nationalize the program and allow nearly unlimited funding.) We need to make college more affordable (and tuitions, already out of control, have risen dramatically since 2008.) On and on.
Our guys tell us what we want to hear and do nothing. The opposition tells us that they’ve changed, that they will compromise, and then they do what they want.
We have found the enemy and he is us.
You do realize that this is all just a cover story for the Gnomes of Zurich’s plot to use the Girl Scouts of America to wrest control of Big Cookie from the Keebler/Oreo Combine.
The Gnomes only THINK their plot is the reality. But its the reptile people who control their minds from their deep earth lair. ( I always wanted a lair by the way). I’ll stop now, their listening.
The left learned they had to do this from 1980-1992, when they lost the Presidency 3 times. This explains a lot of Sanders appeal to lefty millennials- they haven’t seen a lefty espousing lefty ideals lose big at the national level in Presidential elections.
If we lose this year we’ll start to figure it out. Long-term, it doesn’t bode well for our country that both sides probably have to lie about their positions on several key policy planks in order to get elected.
Rob,
AAHAAAAAHH!
I knew all along that Jerry Lewis was behind the whole thing.
Tried to put one over on me did you. HAH!
Regards,
Jim