"If I didnt have that sense of identity rooted in my own small achievements, I wonder how likely it would have been for me to grab onto that sense of sudden empowerment, of being an initiate in some arcane club of hidden wisdom. I wonder what might have happened to me if being the Holder of Secret Knowledge had been my only source of self-esteem the one redeeming landmark in a life of isolation and failure. Indeed, I wonder what power such a worldview would have over me if I could believe that behind the scenes lurked vast and unknowable dark forces forces that could topple a president and perhaps even explain why a person of my deep, vast and bountiful talents was not doing a whole lot better in life?"
"If you believe the lunar landing was a hoax, then you believe that your government was willing and able to lie to you in order to gain prestige it did not earn. You are willing to believe that there are thousands and thousands of engineers, astronauts, technicians, and so on, who are willing to lie on government orders: lie to their friends and family, lie to the press, lie to you. And all of them tens if not hundreds of thousands of them take their secret to the grave."
"The 9/11 Truthers claim that the twin towers were brought down by controlled demolition. Okay. Have you ever seen a controlled demolition? Shows like this are all over The Discovery Channel. Do these people realize how all of the insulation and paneling must be stripped away from the support beams? Do they not understand how these beams must be cut open and the explosives placed with great care? Have they not any idea of the amount of time this takes months and the forest of wires that runs through the structure to the detonating mechanism? Have they given no thought none? to what an enormous job this is, and how much work goes into getting these explosives exactly where they need to be?"
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I'm not voting for Ron Paul because it's not expressly prescribed in the Constitution.
Shiz, you and I see conspiracy theory in two different ways. you view it as a way to feel special, to have special knowledge, etc. I view it as an acknowledgement of truth and a call to action for everyone. I don't feel superior to anyone any more than having been to the temple makes me superior. The stuff that goes on in the temple is sacred, not secret. Anyone can find out what goes on there if they meet the qualifications, and we invite everyone to qualify themselves. Everyone can and should know that the gadiantons have taken over the government and are trying to take away our freedoms. So, to me, the premise of the essay is seriously flawed. Every person I know who believes in conspiracies is trying to spread the knowledge and share with everyone what they know. Most of them don't feel superior. In fact, those not in the church are usually scared spitless. FWIW, I don't believe that the lunar landing was a hoax.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
I think conspiracy theories arise anytime the publicly accepted truth and one's own personal beliefs come into conflict... and someone has the gall to point out the discrepancy.
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
I do believe some do it out of a superiority complex but not all and not always out of self awareness. I also think some are involved because it provides a sense of worth - they have knowledge to share to the unknowing public and thus are important purveyors of truth. That is not to state that you are one of those Arbilad and the last example is not necessarily negative.
Ray, whether a truth is publicly accepted or not has nothing to do with whether it's true or not. There was a time when most people believe the Earth was flat. It turned out to not be the case. There was a time when most people were Christian - but being Christian is good not because most people believed in it, but because it is right. Most Germans during WWII either didn't know about the concentration camps or denied their existence to themselves even if they did know. In fact, basing whether you should believe something on whether or not most people do or do not believe it is a bad method to choose. An that applies to conspiracy theory as well - you shouldn't believe it just because most people don't. That's a bad reason. You shoul believe it because it's true. And TitusTodd, I agree, there are those who gain a sense of superiority out of knowing stuff that others don't. That's not my way, personally speaking, and it's not the way of a lot of others I know. But, for instance, there is one talk show host I sometimes listen to who regularly berates his listeners for doing nothing and being small minded. That's the wrong way to go about things, in my personal opinion.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
Shiz, I didn't mean to appear as if I was taking it personally. I was just using myself as an example of a person who did not fit the basic profile proposed in the article. And arguments could be made that the author is ignoring many basic facts about 9/11, like the speed of heat transfer. The planes didn't have enough fuel to produce a sustained conflaguration. Heat doesn't transfer immediately, which is why, even if you put a piece of paper in an oven hotter than the flash point of paper, it won't immediately catch fire. The jet fuel would have been totally inadequate to melt the steel.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
People can call it whatever they like, conspiracy, truth, falsehood... but I am one who does not believe that the planes alone brought down the towers. There is too much evidence to the contrary.
AND, I don't believe that Bush was behind it.
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no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing... the truth of God will go forth till it has penetrated every website, sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done
Anyone see the film "A Beautiful Mind"? My own observations have led me to conclude there are two basic types of conspiracy theorists: Those who are really brilliant at making connections that may or may not be valid (subject to verification, of course) and those who desperately seek any theory to villify the government or persons they don't like.
I believe we should take the brilliant connection-makers arguments seriously, and engage in more inquiry. I believe we can safely dismiss the others who have an axe to grind. The difficulty lies in that I often find it nearly impossible to tell the difference.
eta: As far as 9/11 goes--I was an intelligence officer reading all the classified analysis associated with the attacks. At one point, a few independent agencies verified that the anthrax used in the attacks came from a US government lab. Immediately, all further communication about that issue stopped. Things that make you go hmmm...
-- Edited by Roper at 15:10, 2007-04-25
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The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
I don't know about you, but seeing folks with axes and whetstones usually clues me in on who has an ax to grind.
Most Germans during WWII either didn't know about the concentration camps or denied their existence to themselves even if they did know. In the early years, that may be true, but in the later years (e.g. after we became involved in the war), it is more a denial than not knowing they existed. There were labor camps all throughout Germany. It was known that less desireables (certain political prisoners and Russian / Slavic POWs) put in the labor camps often died of disease There were even some of the death camps inside Germany, though the more notorious larger ones where the bulk of the genocide occured were purposely put in Poland so as to help keep the fact hidden as long as possible. The difference in their not knowing something then and our "not knowing stuff" now is that then, the government controlled all media, even to the point it deemed listening to foreign news broadcasts a crime against the state (as evidenced by labelling 3 LDS teens in Hamburg major enemies of the state simply because they printed up leaflets telling people what was being said outside of the Third Reich), and today our government can in no way exercise that sort of control. It, just as any other group out there with any sort of agenda, can use the media to spin things, distribute false data, half-true data, or true data.
The question for us is, with all the information (accurate or outright lie) available to us 7x24x365, how does one determine what is correct and what is not?
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
Cat Herder wrote: The question for us is, with all the information (accurate or outright lie) available to us 7x24x365, how does one determine what is correct and what is not? Does anyone care about that anymore? The "standard of truth" applied to almost everything now is the question: Is it effective? If it gets the desired result, it doesn't matter anymore if it's True.
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The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
Yep, and using that paradigm, one really has to ask who is fueling conspiracy thought patterns... and why? Where are the real puppet masters, as Lundbaek likes to refer to it. Or do real puppet masters even exist in every issue, or is a lot of it more or less just one person whispers something in the ear of the person next to them and so on and so on until by the end of the line what is said has little resemblence to what was originally said...
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
