Anon:
Yeah, this kinda bullshit is why so many people don't take anarchism and the far left in general seriously as a political philosophy, association with this sort of nonsense, please for fucks sake cut this conspiracy theory bullshit out!
There is more than enough horrible stuff in the world that actually 100% definitely happened to deal with without speculating on bullshit that might've happened! All it does is distract from the real issues that are actually definitely happening and discredit people trying to help deal with them by association.
Anon 2:
There are even real conspiracies - people conspire to do all kinds of shit, most of it relatively out in the open and most of the rest of it very poorly hidden. It's crazy that there's a genre called "conspiracy theories" - about everything from contrails to chupacabras to UFOs to specific business clubs - that are all linked not by their content, but by their disconnection from ordinary standards of evidence.
Or - again, more specifically - what's crazy is that "conspiracy theorists" treat it as a genre and are afficionados of hypotheses/explanations for phenomena that aren't connected to ordinary standards of evidence, and in fact become suspicious of evidence that's held to any standard.
Anon 3:
The fact that there is a conspiracy to maintain a class system overshadows all other conspiracies. But this isn't a conspiracy, right? It's just the system.
Anon 4:
I don't think they like to mention obvious things like that because it isn't supposedly esoteric knowledge and so it doesn't make them feel like they are smarter than everyone else, which appears to be the real motivation.
Anon 5:
Seriously though my real problem with it is that it infects actual real politics by association. Can anyone here honestly tell be they haven't been called a conspiracy theorist for stating an actual real life political fact like "Bush and co used faulty information on Iraq" or "There is a conflict of interest with government regulators trying to regulate companies the government gets huge tax revenue from" or a million other things?
Anon 6:
The amount of certainty that (certain) conspiracy theorists demonstrate in their claims can only be achieved by imbuing certain sources of information with neigh absolute authority ... in other words, you have read something by someone that claims to have special access to knowledge and believed them completely... which is against my anarchist principals.
Neil Adam Collins Thurs. June 19th, 2014:
I don't put ANYTHING past the government, personally. That still doesn't make me willing to believe any particular claim unless there is actual proof. This is not the way actual science works. Because the government HAS been exposed doing x and y, this does not prove they are also doing z. It does prove they have no morals and are CAPABLE of doing z, I'll give you that. However, I would add that they don't even NEED to do most of these conspiracy claims. Capitalism is doing just fine at this. The more you learn about how our economics system works, inherently and structurally, then you begin to see that these conspiracies are not even needed.
Pick any one of the claims of conspiracy.... Causing massive cancer, enslaving the human race, destroying the planet, impending global depopulation programs, etc...
These things are all accomplished by the monetary market system and yet this is largely ignored, although it is WIDE out in the open.
So WHY do we seem to gravitate towards the next claim of what 'they' are secretly doing, while ignoring the things 'they' are definitely doing out in the open? WHY?
This is a very important question. I have a few answers if anyone is interested.
Autumn: I am interested to hear your answers in regard to that. I definitely would like to see a happier world and I think the first step in the right direction is going to be achieved by awareness. People need to be aware of what is happening around them. This is why we have the news but unfortunately the media is controlled in my opinion so it is hard to say what news is exact and what is just stumble upon.
Neil Adam Collins I would also add that its more than likely that even the most thoughtful, critically thinking, open-minded of the conspiracy enthusiasts don't actually grasp the STRUCTURAL nature of our economic system, and instead see these these problems as "corruption", rather than built-in. It is very important to realize the nature of the capitalist system.
As for the question of "WHY do people gravitate toward "hidden" plots and conspiracies (many of them probably true, many not), while ignoring proven and obvious injustice that achieve the same agenda?"
We have a tendency to want to think in terms of "us and them", good people and bad people, "our tribe VS. the tribe on the other side of the mountain". So when the culprit is actually a social system, rather than a group of evil people, there is no one to blame, this is very inconvenient.
Also, hidden things are much more exciting! They are cool. There is a chance that we could be in the small group that 'knows' the secret, hidden info. This is very good for the ego.
Things that are already proven insult us; because if the world is this fuct up from things that everyone knows and takes for granted, how embarassing. It must be something more cunning that has eluded us.
I was reading the book "Science As A Candle In the Dark" by Carl Sagan and it was an amazing book, mostly about the question of 'why ddo so many people believe pseudo-science?' Also about the dangers of having a public which is science-illiterate. One of his main ideas as to WHY was because of the way science is taught in school. We all crave magical, spiritual mysteries. When science is taught to children as boring memorization of facts and latin words, the adult grows up falling for anything that will fill that natural need for things to be cool and interesting.
Lastly, I think it is because when we can blame some hidden group of evil men, such as the Rockafellers or who ever, we don't have to take responsibility for our perdicament. The cars we drive pollute the planet far worse than any chem-trails could. The plastic we use is destroying the oceans. The wealth we enjoy (in the western world) causes military strife and poverty around the world. The computers and phones we use to communicate are made from rare earth metals that are extracted by bare-foot slave labor in Africa and keeps those nations in perpetual poverty and war.
The richest 65 billionaires own as much wealth as the bottom half of the human race. Over 1 billion people on our planet lack food and clean drinking water (that is one in 7 humans).
The list goes on....
ALL OF THESE THINGS are the structural unfolding of global capitalism, not hidden conspiracies. The difference between chem-trail like things and the evil caused by our economic model, is that conspiracies deny you any responsibility when in fact we are all complicit. Very inconvenient.
Autumn:
I can say I agree that the system itself is corrupt but it took people to set up that system. So in that aspect, there was most likely some kind of intention and knowing that this would result from the system installed?
Neil Adam Collins
The capitalist system and the logic behind it was put together by thinkers in the 1700's when the world was a very different place and the understandings of science were different than they are now. Much of the core, underlying science that was used to develope and justify the capitalist model has been disproven by modern science. I have a few examples.
Thomas Malthus' theory of population is one of the core justifications for capitalism... has been disproven. Very interesting stuff.
The idea was that if everyone had what they needed (food, water, etc...) then the poor would reproduce exponentially, covering the earth in a few generations time. Therefore, there must be inequality and competition. Therefore the poor must always have struggle, starvation and disease to keep them in check.
Totally disproven. As people have increased quality of life, better health, education, adequate nutrition, clean drinking water, etc... As infant mortality rates drop.... as all of these things get better, the birthrate and population actually decrease and level off.
Autumn:
awareness and education will only bring us closer to the truth.
Neil Adam Collins
Very true. I also think that we have to cultivate an awareness that seeks the root causes to things rather than only focusing on the symptoms. Symptoms are important too, but we have to see that these things we call "corruption" are only to be expected in a system which inherently requires competition, scarcity, inequality, etc.. it is built into the monetary model. The very word "radical" means to 'go to the root'.
Autumn:
Symptoms are very important. We see this also in the healthcare field. They want to give us a pill to fix the symptom but not the underlying issue of the symptom.
ANOMALY HUNTING
"pseudoscience almost always works backwards – that is its primary malfunction, starting with a desired conclusion and then looking for evidence and twisting logic to support that conclusion."
Note: This does not only apply to popular pseudoscientific claims, but in our everyday thinking patterns as well. A good defense is one's awareness of his/her own capacity for Anomaly Hunting. Check for it regularly.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-hunting/
Speaking of Joe Rogan, it is very interesting to watch the episode where he asks Neil deGrasse Tyson about conspiracies such as chem-trails, the moon landing hoax and others. The whole episode is pretty much a conversation about conspiracy theories. The part about chem-trails begins at about minute 1:02.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpHh_TU2kcI
Neil Collins, April 7, 2015-
The problem I find with "conspiracy theorists" is that they seem to be fixated on symptoms of the problems in our world, rarely looking to root causes. They are actually many time right in the ideas about what the rich or governments are doing to lie to people, to exploit people, etc... But this is all for nothing when the focus continues to be on these surface issues.
Rarely do you hear some one who subscribes to the belief in chem-trails, for instance... rarely do you hear them concerned about pollution which is actually out in the open, which is causing the planet to burn under our feet. I'm not sure if it is because these obvious things are boring in comparison to the more 'hidden' and secret chem-trails, or if it is because actual pollution is something we are all contributing to and therefore inconvenient.
Another example is war. It can be very exciting to rally against covert government and CIA operations, but war which actually kills so many in our world, well, it is not so exciting to rally against war anymore, it seems.
And the most glaring one to me is the phenomenon of the Illuminati. People who are so excited and concerned about the illuminati, a secret sect of global elites who plot to control mankind through use of their accumulated wealth.... do not seem able or willing to contemplate the simple fact that the nature of money in it's self creates hierarchy, without even the need for any intention on anyone's part to enslave the masses consciously.
Yes, some people do plot to seek advantage over other people, many do not but the simple fact is that it is written into the mathematical nature of the monetary system. Hierarchy is an inherent nature of the money system itself. THIS is called seeing things in their root causes. The word "radical" means 'to go to the root'. One of the main problems with the so called "conspiracy theorist" is that they are rarely radical, besides rarely ever having any radical solutions (and many times no solutions at all) .
