I’ve finally broken free of my original self imposed boundaries – This one’s nothing to do with cars. It’s about conspiracies, and how to deal with them (or more to the point, how I deal with them). This actually started as a comment on someone’s status, but I had so much to say that Facebook melted and didn’t let me post it - Or was it the government trying to silence me?
Regardless, I’ll say it here, where my tinfoil hat protects me from spying satellites and alien mind probes.
I have a massive problem with most conspiracy theories. Not all of them, because some are benign, harmless and fun (The Loch Ness Monster, The Surrey Panther, Brian Blessed, etc). What I have a massive problem with is when people or groups provide potentially distressing pieces of information, stated as fact, based on no evidence whatsoever. I like evidence. Evidence is cool.
Worse still are conspiracy theories based on fabricated evidence, which are, by their very nature, harder to unravel, and at their most destructive, can cause lasting psychological damage.
By way of example, I am now going to do something which, despite my oh-so-grown-up age of 32, I have been scared to even think about since I was twelve. I’m going to write the Lord’s Prayer backwards. I’ll explain why afterwards:
Amen ever and ever for glory the and power the kingdom the is thyne for evil from us deliver but temptation into not us lead and us against trespass who those forgive we as trespasses our us forgive and bread daily our day this us give heaven in is it as earth on done be will thy come kingdom thy name thy be hallowed heaven in art who father our.
Writing that (and subsequently saying it out loud) was like therapy. I’ve been irrationally terrified by the thought of those words, in that order for well over half my life.
Why?
Because when I was twelve, my next door neighbour showed me a book, inside which was a picture of a Nun with bleeding sockets where her eyes once lived. The caption underneath the photograph said something along the lines of “After reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards, Sister Sledge (may not have been her real name) lost both her eyes in a really nasty way”
I don’t know what the book was called, not that it matters, but the point is that that was all the evidence it took, a page in a ridiculous book, to scar a young boy’s mind enough to permanently terrify him whenever he even accidently thought of the word “Amen”, lest his own mind betray him and recite the whole thing backwards against his will (which, after now writing it down, I realise would have taken some considerable effort on my subconscious’s part).
There were nightmares. Lots of them.
But this is how conspiracies grip us, in the part of our subconscious that doesn’t know any better. The inner child who doesn’t question authority. A book said it, and grown ups write books, and grown ups tell the truth, so it must be true. Now we have the internet, which is essentially the whole world, in a book…… and the biggest double edged sword ever created.
It’s a place that contains articles of such exquisite lunacy and hysteria, that people can lose themselves at the drop of a digital hat (I bet Justin Timberlake wears a digital hat). However, the antidote to this poison – and it is a poison – is more often than not right there as well, on the internet, and just as accessible at the drop of a slightly larger digital hat.
The only problem facing those who are susceptible to conspiracy theories (which is all of us to varying degrees), is that it’s easier to digest dubious facts than it is to research their validity, and to quote Christopher Hitchens “people prefer a junk theory, to no theory at all”.
And why wouldn’t we? As a species we love mystery, we love answers, and we especially love it when those answers are mysterious (Which is why so many of us loved that gobshite ‘Lost’ – myself included until about 2 years after it finished, where the thought suddenly occurred: “Hang on……. That was bollocks!”).
However, for whatever reason, it is our tendency to ‘fill in the blanks’ in acquired knowledge by stuffing it full of any old shit we can dream up at the time – and by doing this; by siding established phenomena with utter fiction, it can give the powerful illusion of truth.
Point in case, someone posted this on Facebook yesterday (and therefore prompted this post):
“but this is scary .... http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2011/01/huge-asteroid-will-hit-antarctica-in-2012/”
Go ahead and read the article. It’s fucking ridiculous!
The established phenomena, in this case, is meteors, and what they have the potential to do. Meteors obviously do exist and if one sufficiently large enough smacks us, everyone on the planet would have an adequate excuse for not going to work the next day. Now, couple the fact of meteors existing, with the fiction that one is definitely going to hit us very soon indeed, and all you have to do now is post it on your blog, set the comments to ‘user approved’ (thus giving you the option to filter out any of those pesky comments that disagree with you) and BINGO! You have yourself a bona fide conspiracy theory.
Let’s overlook the fact that this particular article is housed on a website called philosophers-stone.co.uk, and the fact that all the banners advertise stuff like tarot reading and astrology, and the glaring fact that it provides absolutely no sources whatsoever for the claims made within it. It was written by someone. Someone grown up, who is so sure in their writing that what they are saying is true. How can you argue with that? Well, if merely seeing something written down has the ability to satisfy your thirst for knowledge, then you can’t, and I find that massively frustrating.
It doesn’t matter who posted that link, but here’s what Facebook wouldn’t let me say about it:
A Google search on the keywords Asteroid+Antarctica+2012 pulls the same story in various forms from about 10 different websites… all with really sensible names like: plantosurvive2012.com, godlikeproductions.com, and my personal favourite – davidicke.com (where I go for all my rational fact-nuggets).
There are anywhere between 10 - 40,000 amateur astronomers in the UK
Turning to credible sources then, NASA run a program called the Near Earth Object Program, with something called the JPL Sentry System – a project that tracks near orbit meteorites and calculates their potential collision courses – a cosmic risk assessment if you like. As it stands, all projections for meteorite collisions within the next 100 years present 0 - 1 on the impact risk scale (a scale of 0-10, where pants should be shit at around 5 upwards).
Worryingly, there is a potential collision anticipated with an asteroid called 1950 DA, but not until 2880 – I’ll pop the kettle on while we wait.
There will always be conspiracy theories, for the simple fact that the rapidity at which they are devised far outstrips the speed at which they can be debunked.
Plus astronomers, scientists, historians and governments have got better and more important things to do than sit around reassuring everyone that we’re not, in fact, going to get hit by an asteroid in 2012, and despite what the Daily Mail says, you can’t get Cancer from EVERYTHING!, the Holocaust did happen, and that there are not plans afoot to create a New World Order.
Because of the enormity of internet based conspiracy theories out there, it just isn’t possible to spend as much time, money and effort as is needed to refute them all (and it is my theory that conspiracy theorists know this), so here’s my guidelines for dealing with them in general:
1. Who told you? Are they the sort of person that likes conspiracy theories? Only you can be the judge of the volume of salt that should be pinched when accepting information from this person, but if conspiracies are their thing, chances are that credible channels of information gathering aint their stomping ground.
2. Where was the information sourced from? Was it a reliable news organisation or was it from some website with the word “conspiracy” or something as equally obvious in the URL? You can go ahead and ignore it if it was the latter. This is certainly not a measure of truth, but national, local and independent news sources tend not to get caught up in conspiracy theories for the simple reason that there is bugger all tangible evidence for most of them.
3. If you can be bothered, check the sources yourself –Try and disprove everything, even if it’s stuff you want to be true (especially if it is). Sometimes when doing this I draw a blank, and I can’t find anything that disputes what I’ve been told…. If this happens to you, don’t panic! It brings me neatly on to my last point;
4. Does it sound like horse shit? If it does, chances are, it is.
I apply this mental checklist to everything from Astrology to Tarot cards, organised religion to UFO’s, Ouija Boards to Hover Boards. If it doesn’t meet the right criteria for each point, I happily discard it with wanton abandon. I hope you do too.
I realise that this post has the potential to prompt responses along the lines of:
“The New World Order is happening – look at this website: www.thenewworldorderisrealandnotmadeup.com”
To those people, I say this: Go ahead and build your bunker, stock up on tinned food & bog roll, and don your tinfoil hat. I’ll be down the pub if you need me…..
…..Wait!..... WHAT’S THIS COMING OUT OF MY EYES???????..........
Twitter: @Ihavewrites
Oddly enough, you don't cite any sources explaining why it is necessary to cite sources. Why is that, I wonder?
ReplyDeleteBecause if I did, the Universe would implode.
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