Can You Hear Me Now?

A lot of times, the signal to noise ratio between us suffers for want of substantiation. Although that isn't fundamentally a bad thing, it has become a real problem lately. Everything, even the most basic facts seem open to interpretation anymore. But it's always been a problem for people trying to convince mainstream thinkers that alternative explanations for events deserve more in-depth examination. We've come to think of these situations, derisively, as "conspiracy theories". The recent trouble has been compounded by government secrecy and mainstream media's willingness to negligently assist government in creating the mass consciousness it finds most useful.  

For the purpose of this diary, I'm purposely omitting professional scandalmongers. You know the kind. They obstinately contend that every situation is some kind of interlocking conspiracy. "Nothing is what it seems," and "If you only knew the truth," are their hallmark segues into hours-long recitations about the fantastical debauchery they think controls a piece of something, everywhere. Those people get off on pandering to the wild imaginations of the mentally unsound. They don't count.

I'm also acknowledging ahead of time that so-called "strategic information" (propaganda) exists and is pretty regularly disseminated to muddy the waters of discourse. This falls squarely under the category of "perception management," which isn't always meant for domestic consumption but appears to be repeatedly employed of for its capacity to use disdain for conspiracy theories in general and, thus, preemptively dissuade people from pursuing alternatives to explanations that may conflict with endorsed or prevailing understanding of events.

So, leaving scandalmongers and propagandists aside, let's look at the mental landscape on which conspiracy theories stand. I reckon there are two types of people prone to believing in what eventually get labeled "conspiracy theories". I categorize these people into two groups, the fearful and the disappointed.

"Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom." - Marilyn Ferguson

The first group, the fearful, has generated a reputation that precedes it by country miles. No doubt, the perpetually paranoid have earned more than their fair share of attention for glomming on to every bizarre explanation for anomalous breaks in the rhythm of life. They believe in everything from anal-probing space men to end-of-times, new world order fanaticism at the behest of stealthy organizations. The primary feature of their faith, in explanations like aliens and secret societies pushing new world order on unassuming populations, is fear - fear, deeply rooted in an awareness of their powerlessness.  In other words, that awareness traumatizes them.

Now, if you believe that you have some dignity by virtue of being alive and, furthermore, that that dignity includes the right of self-determination, there's no reason an awareness that more powerful people and organizations can rob you of those things in the blink of an eye shouldn't traumatize you. Unlike some others, I don't think these people are crazy. I think they're just trying to make sense of knowing they can be victimized without ever being given a chance to stage a heroic fight for their relevance. There's nothing funny about that to me. All in all, these people do me and the society we share no more harm than people that stay sane by believing in God or the afterlife, and I challenge any of you to prove those things exists. Kudos to you if you can prove one or both exist, by the way, you'd be the first.

"Carve a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The second group is comprised of disappointed souls. They don't get talked about anywhere near as often as their prototypical tinfoil-hat-wearing cousins do. Here's where I fit in.

This group comes by believing is some conspiracy theories honestly enough. We assume that things function correctly, on balance, because, well, they do. We assume that people are, generally speaking, bright and competent. We assume that people, generally speaking, want to play a role in the good fight. And we assume that, generally speaking, people will use whatever means at their disposal to ensure that the good guys win as often as possible. We put our faith in these things; this is the faith that keeps us sane.

Now, if you believe that your intellect, instincts and ethics are generally representative of those around you, there's no reason not to be disappointed by the systemic, catastrophic failure of those qualities to produce the results we were all, ostensibly, looking for. It just doesn't make sense. Speaking strictly for myself, I perceive these kinds of catastrophic failures as abnormally disjunctive. It arouses my suspicion. I want to know what kept the ends from meeting.

Although people like me believe things ordinarily function the way they ought to, we are aware that dangerous inefficiencies and incompetence can exist overlooked until they strain events beyond their elasticity. We're also aware that it's possible to obstruct the best efforts of people. When we're trying to understand a collapse of our notions about how the world works we're inclined to look for evidence of inefficiency, incompetence and interference, frequently in that order.

So, for example, when I say that I believe a small group of people in this country ran interference against various elements of our intelligence community prior to 9/11, I'm telling you a lot of things, namely:

I. I believe that the men and women that comprise the aggregate of our national intelligence are generally bright and competent.
 II. I believe those men and women are, as a rule, motivated to protect the nation from harm.
 III. I believe that the unimpeded results of their efforts to gather and use intelligence to protect the country will do just that.
 IV. I believe that the bureaucracies they operate within are ultimately dependant on continuity of procedure and purpose to produce the positive results we need.
 V. I believe that justifications, relying on inefficiency and incompetence, for the systemic failure of our intelligence community to produce the result of protecting America prior to 9/11 exceed the limits of plausibility.
 VI. I believe that, in addition to inefficiency and incompetence, there was active interference with and exploitation of bureaucratic dependence on continuity to "connect the dots".
 VII. Analyzing the test of "motive, means and opportunity," I believe that the strongest suspects for this interference (people that would most benefit from this interference, people that had the power to impede bureaucratic success, and people that had the opportunity to impede bureaucratic success) are neoconservative government officials associated with the group known as Project for a New American Century.

 

Am I correct? I can't say for sure. My logic is usually pretty sound but it isn't infallible. Should thinking this way make anyone the object of ridicule? No, I don't think so.

Look, at its core, this thinking reflects a faith in people, faith in the agencies we pay taxes to sustain and serve our collective interests, and faith representative government. If I'm nuts then so are democracy and any society that believes democratized people are worth putting faith in.

"He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help." - Abraham Lincoln

Of course, there are critics everywhere and nowhere so prevalent, it seems, as on the periphery of those seeking answers that official narratives don't provide. These people usually call themselves skeptics; they delight in debunking alternative explanations, or "conspiracy theories".

Some so-called skeptics insist that conspiracies are impossibly difficult to pull off. They're usually dismissive, wrapping every hypothesis they don't approve of in tinfoil for you - and anybody else that happens upon your conversation with them. These are the people, too, that are forced to dismiss inconvenient realities like black markets, criminal gangs, corporate monopolies, industry price fixing, unjustified invasions, and the like. Where I come from, that's the kind of thinking that will get you labeled delusional.

Likewise, some so-called skeptics maintain that it's foolish to look for explanations of failure outside of incompetence and inefficiency, even when the limits of credibility are only barely visible in reason's rear view mirror. The preferred dialectic tool for these folks is outright mockery. In a way, that makes sense. As far as I can tell, these people essentially suppose that catastrophic failures are to be expected because people are fundamentally stupid, inept and untrustworthy. Every moment of excellence or functionality is some kind of glorious accident to them, apparently. It's never been explained to my satisfaction how people like this think they managed to rise above the typical human muck on a consistent basis - they always do - or why they and three of their closest friends are the only ones that happened to do it. In any case, if they really believe that society is filled to the brim with so much human waste, save themselves and perhaps five or six people they think highly of, they have no business courting the disaster of lesser people trying to think for themselves in debates about conspiracy theories at all. Come to think of it, they have no business even supporting the notions of liberty, equality and representative government, for obvious reasons.

I've never found either of these two kinds of people particularly useful when needing to challenge my own assumptions. But then, they're not really there to help. Fortunately for rationality, they don't really represent skepticism's quest to test logic and dogma either.
As you might have guessed, real skeptics are hard to find. They have an uncanny ability to stay engaged but objective. And they're invaluable in helping honest people maintain their logical equilibrium while they grapple with narratives that don't add up.

With all this made clear, then, is it easier to understand how some of us become dreaded "conspiracy theorists"? Is it as easy to put out of your mind the reasoning and motivation of people like myself? Or, just maybe, has the signal been amplified against the noise a bit?

Put another way: Can you hear me now?