I don’t know that I necessarily believe any conspiracy theories, but God knows that I appreciate them. I love conspiracy theories for the way that they illuminate how people look at their world.
The way people use them to explain their own powerlessness, to justify their bigotries, to create power structures and to enforce the borders around those structures of power. Most importantly, it is always key to remember the primary reason we force ourselves to believe things that either don’t exist or at least can never be proven, it is to create tribal identities. We’ll take on unlikely pronouncements to join groups. To reinforce those things within ourselves we’re unsure of. We fabricate false realities to forge social bonds with other people. We’re all so desperately lonely.
If I had to choose my favorite type of conspiracy theory, it’s Deconstructive Conspiracy Theory.
Conspiracy theories even crazier than the original, that lay bare the absurdities of conspiratorial thinking in general. A light fun one? “Franz Ferdinand hired his own assassin because he didn’t want to have to witness the horrors of World War I.” It warps causality, yes, but that’s the point. It’s almost like koans about falling trees or a single clapping hand, it’s not about trying to make sense, it’s about hitting power and reset on the Nintendo of your mind, so you can think clearly.
Until recently, my favorite of these was the double-cross Uno-Reversi 9-11 conspiracy theory, wherein it was, yeah, an inside job but also not one? The idea Bush knew what Bin Laden was planning up to a point but believed they were just going to be hijacks that could be blamed on their mutual enemy Saddam Hussein. George and Sam were both religious zealot nepo-babies within wildly-corrupt oil-wealth dynasties after all. Bush would see it as an area of agreement.
Then, of course, boom.
But my new one is how all of the world’s governments are indeed covering up U.F.O.s, but not for any of the reasons people want to think. Not because they worry about a panic, not because they think it a threat to their power, rather just because it’s the best distraction they’ve found to jerk us around with since the breads and circuses of Rome. Any time there’s a scandal or crash, just throw another mentally-ill military-contractor out there, to say something that is intriguing without any real evidence, all the sudden we’re talking about that, instead of The Epstein Files.
Or whatever. Whatever the boom is that week. Why would they ever tell us the truth either way when ambiguities can be hung over our heads as weapons of social control forever? It’s perfect.
I’m not saying that this theory is at all actually true, that’s not the point, I’m not saying that it’s not true, either. That’s why I love it! It’s a koan. A palate-cleansing koan. Because the question isn’t who’s right or who’s wrong. The question is: Who do you believe your beliefs make you?
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